Judge Invites a Patent ‘Sea Change’ With Plea to Upend Precedent

A federal judge’s impassioned plea to substitute “common sense” for years of precedent governing how patents are interpreted in litigation would throw innumerable patents into limbo, attorneys say.

Judge Colm F. Connolly’s entreaty, in a Delaware district court decision regarding Covid-19 vaccines, focused on a line of cases at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit establishing that preambles in patent claims generally aren’t “limiting”—that they aren’t an essential part of the invention being claimed.

In patent litigation, the meaning of a single term can determine the fate of billions of dollars, and lawyers craft patent applications ...