List of United States patent law cases

This is a list of patent law cases in the United States from 1878 to 2007.

Early cases

*City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co. - 1878. "Prior use" does not include experimental use.
*Egbert v. Lippmann - 1881. Held that public use of an invention bars the patenting of it.
*Continental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co. 1908. Established the principle that patent holders have no obligation to use their patent.
*Bauer & Cie. v. O'Donnell - 1913. Patent licensing terms do not include dictating the price of the product.
*Ex Parte Quayle - 1935. Decision related to the patent application process.
*Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. - 1950. Introduced the doctrine of equivalents.

1950 to 1999

*Graham v. John Deere Co. 1966. Introduced the requirement that a patent could only be granted for a nonobvious invention .
*Gottschalk v. Benson - 1972. Held that an algorithm is not patentable.
*Honeywell v. Sperry Rand - 1973. Invalidated the 1964 patent for the ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computer, thus putting the invention of the electronic digital computer into the public domain.
*Parker v. Flook - 1978. Ruled that a mathematical algorithm isn't patentable if its application itself isn't novel.

*Diamond v. Chakrabarty 1980. Allowed that a genetically modified micro-organisms can be patented.
*Diamond v. Diehr - 1981. Allowed that the execution of a process, controlled by running a computer program was patentable.

*MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. - 1983 onwards. Involving a fundamental technology required for the artificial synthesis of antibody molecules.

*Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc. - 1990. Held that premarketing activity conducted to gain approval of a device under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is exempted from a finding of infringement.

*Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. - 1996. Held that an issue designated as a matter of law is resolved by the judge, and an issue construed as a question of fact is determined by the jury.

*Warner-Jenkinson Company, Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co. - 1997. Updated the doctrine of equivalents.
*State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. - 1998. Defined the scope of a business method patent.
*Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc. - 1998. Determined what constituted being "on sale" for the purposes of barring the grant of a patent for an invention.

2000 and later

*Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co. 2002. Related to the doctrine of equivalents.
*MVDDS dispute - 2002 onwards.
*Immersion v. Sony - 2002. Related to vibration functions in their gaming controllers. Dropped in 2007.

*Ex Parte Bowman, later overturned by Ex Parte Lundgren - 2004. The latter found that process inventions do not have to be in the technological arts in order to be patentable.

*Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Association Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc. - 2005. Found that EULAs are enforceable in some cases.
*Merck KGaA v. Integra Lifesciences I, Ltd. - 2005. Related to Research exemption.

*Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft - 2006. Multiple lawsuits over several patents relating to MP3 encoding and compression technologies.
*Ariad v. Lilly - 2006. Broad infringement case related to a ubiquitous transcription factor.
*EBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. - 2006. Allowed that an injunction should not automatically issue based on a finding of patent infringement.
*Illinois Tool Works Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc. - 2006. Related to "tying" arrangements of patented products.

*KSR v. Teleflex - 2007. Concerning the issue of obviousness as applied to patent claims.
*Microsoft v. AT&T - 2007. Related to international enforceability of U.S. software patents.

* Quanta v. LG Electronics (SupremeCourtDocket|06|937) - 2008. Patent exhaustion and its applicability to certain types of method patents.

ee also

* Copyright Term Extension Act
*
* List of patent case law

External links

* [http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/history.html "The History of Software Patents"] , Bitlaw, Beck & Tysver, 2007