Last week, C4IP board members and former federal judges Paul Michel and Kathleen O’Malley published an opinion piece in The Hill highlighting the dire need to pass the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act.
The piece traces the origins of the current “crisis of patentability” back to a pair of Supreme Court cases in the early 2010s. Judges Michel and O’Malley explain how the limits imposed on patentability in these cases have set a restrictive precedent that now makes it difficult for inventors to predict whether their high-tech creations will be protected by IP rights.
There is a solution, however. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act would set clear standards for patentability and extend patent protection to important fields like medical diagnostics, promoting investor confidence in cutting-edge research.
As the judges explain: “[T]he inherent ambiguity of decisions like Alice and Mayo put lower courts into an impossible position — and the costs to innovation and the economy continue to mount. Congress can end the damage by passing PERA without delay.”
Read the full op-ed here: https://thehill.com/opinion/4530270-congress-needs-to-clean-up-the-supreme-courts-mess-on-patents/