Justices Urged to Examine Backdated Models Used in Patent Cases

Innovation Sciences LLC asked the Supreme Court to stop a “dangerous” precedent that allegedly gives patent-infringement defendants like Amazon.com Inc. a license to build inaccurate models of technology cobbled together from prior-art references and use the models to wipe out patents asserted against them.

The justices should weigh “whether an inference that a device that could have existed before the invention thereof by an inventor” can prove that patent claims were anticipated “in the absence of any evidence that such a device actually existed prior to the invention’s critical date,” according to Innovation’s Monday petition.

The underlying dispute goes back ...