The U.S. Supreme Court’s much anticipated ruling Thursday in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International may prove to be a turning point in the corporate world’s battle against patent trolls.
The debate over the impact of the terse 18-page ruling began minutes after it went up online—and is likely to continue for months. But a consensus among intellectual property experts seemed to emerge that the decision was bad news for entities that cobble together broad but weak patents for the main purpose of suing deep-pocket patent holders for infringement—trolls, in other words.
