Microsoft Corporation, Petitioner v. I4i Limited Partnership et al. (564 U.S. 91)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 9, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 564 U.S. 91 · 131 S. Ct. 2238
- Decided
- June 9, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2010
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Sotomayor
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court. Under § 282 of the Patent Act of 1952, “[a] patent shall be presumed valid” and “[t]he burden of establishing invalidity of a patent or any claim thereof shall rest on the party asserting such invalidity.” 35 U. S. C. §282. We consider whether § 282 requires an invalidity defense to be proved by clear and convincing evidence. We hold that it does. I A Pursuant to its authority under the Patent Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8, Congress has charged the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) with the task of examining patent applications, 35 U. S. C. § 2(a)(1), and issuing patents if “it appears that the applicant is entitled to a patent under the law,” § 131. Congress has set forth the prerequisites for issuance of a patent, which the PTO must evaluate in the examination process. To receive patent protection a claimed invention must, among other things, fall within one of the express categories of patentable subject matter, §101, and be novel, §102, and. nonobvious, §103. Most relevant here, the on-sale bar of § 102(b) precludes patent protection for any “invention” that was “on sale in this country” more than one year prior to the filing of a patent application. See generally Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc., 525 U. S. 55, 67-68 (1998). In evaluating whether these and other statutory conditions have been…
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