Friends of the court: Using Amicus Briefs to Identify Corporate Advocacy Positions in Supreme Court Patent Litigation

Dire predictions that without the threat of an injunction patentees will be unable to license their inventions absent a lawsuit are simply unsupportable. In the wireless telecommunications industry, for example, products and services often implicate hundreds of patents. The likelihood is far greater that technology companies will license questionable patents in order to avoid litigation. The Amici, like other patent owners, have relied on the long-settled expectation that the patent grant is presumptively enforceable via a permanent injunction. They have guided their investments in research and development, and their decisions to obtain, acquire and maintain their patent portfolios, on this understanding. The Court should not undermine the value of those investments, and the incentives to continue those investments, based on Petitioners? errant historical and policy arguments.