Supreme Court Will Consider When Inventor Can Attack Own Patent

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to wade into a patent infringement dispute between Minerva Surgical Inc. and Hologic Inc. over a doctrine that bars an inventor who sells his patent rights from later claiming the patent was wrongly issued.

The court-made rule, called assignor estoppel, only applies to inventors seeking to invalidate a patent in court, not in inter partes review proceedings at the patent office. It is intended to block an inventor from selling his patent and later say in court that what he sold was worthless.

The Supreme Court could eliminate or narrow the rule, which harms innovation ...