The US Supreme Court recently did something unique: the Court rendered landmark decisions in three patent cases. This article provides a brief overview of these cases and offers insights into the new environment for those in the patent litigation system.Permanent Injunctive Relief The first case involved whether the traditional four-factor test for permanent injunctive relief applied to patent disputes. It was standard practice for district courts to issue permanent injunctions against patent infringement absent exceptional circumstances. So when the jury found that eBay had infringed a business method patent that MercExchange had offered to license, but the district court denied the permanent injunction, intellectual property (IP) practitioners were not surprised by the Federal Circuit's decision to reverse and issue the injunction.
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