List of United States patent law cases

This is a list of patent law cases in the United States from 1878 to 2007.

[edit] Early cases

City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co. - 1878. "Prior use" does not include experimental use.
Egbert v. Lippmann - 1881. Held that public use of an invention bars the patenting of it.
Continental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co. 1908. Established the principle that patent holders have no obligation to use their patent.
Bauer & Cie. v. O'Donnell - 1913. Patent licensing terms do not include dictating the price of the product.
Ex Parte Quayle - 1935. Decision related to the patent application process.
Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. - 1950. Introduced the doctrine of equivalents.

Graham v. John Deere Co. 1966. Introduced the requirement that a patent could only be granted for a nonobvious invention .
Gottschalk v. Benson - 1972. Held that an algorithm is not patentable.
Honeywell v. Sperry Rand - 1973. Invalidated the 1964 patent for the ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computer, thus putting the invention of the electronic digital computer into the public domain.
Parker v. Flook - 1978. Ruled that a mathematical algorithm isn't patentable if its application itself isn't novel.

Diamond v. Chakrabarty 1980. Allowed that a genetically modified micro-organisms can be patented.
Diamond v. Diehr - 1981. Allowed that the execution of a process, controlled by running a computer program was patentable.

MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. - 1983 onwards. Involving a fundamental technology required for the artificial synthesis of antibody molecules.

Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc. - 1990. Held that premarketing activity conducted to gain approval of a device under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is exempted from a finding of infringement.

Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. - 1996. Held that an issue designated as a matter of law is resolved by the judge, and an issue construed as a question of fact is determined by the jury.

Warner-Jenkinson Company, Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co. - 1997. Updated the doctrine of equivalents.
State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. - 1998. Defined the scope of a business method patent.
Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc. - 1998. Determined what constituted being "on sale" for the purposes of barring the grant of a patent for an invention.

Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co. 2002. Related to the doctrine of equivalents.
MVDDS dispute - 2002 onwards.
Immersion v. Sony - 2002. Related to vibration functions in their gaming controllers. Dropped in 2007.

Ex Parte Bowman, later overturned by Ex Parte Lundgren - 2004. The latter found that process inventions do not have to be in the technological arts in order to be patentable.

Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft - 2006. Multiple lawsuits over several patents relating to MP3 encoding and compression technologies.
Ariad v. Lilly - 2006. Broad infringement case related to a ubiquitous transcription factor.
EBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. - 2006. Allowed that an injunction should not automatically issue based on a finding of patent infringement.
Illinois Tool Works Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc. - 2006. Related to "tying" arrangements of patented products.

KSR v. Teleflex - 2007. Concerning the issue of obviousness as applied to patent claims.
Microsoft v. AT&T - 2007. Related to international enforceability of U.S. software patents.