The last two months saw no fewer than three U.S. Supreme Court patent decisions, two of them illustrating the concerns of a majority of the court that patent rights not be used to stifle innovation or competition.
The only one of this trio of cases that produced a dissent (and a sharp one at that) is Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, 133 S.Ct. 2223 (2013), in which the court ruled 5-3 that "reverse payment" settlement agreements, where the patent holder pays an accused infringer in return for an agreement that the infringer will not practice the invention during the term of the patent, may violate the antitrust laws.
