U.S. Top Court to Examine How Government Agency Reviews Patents; Reuters via New York Times, 1/15/16

Reuters via New York Times; U.S. Top Court to Examine How Government Agency Reviews Patents:

"The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a federal agency's procedures have made it too easy to successfully cancel patents after agreeing on Friday to decide a case involving a vehicle speedometer that alerts drivers if they are speeding.

The nine justices will hear an appeal filed by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, whose speedometer patent was invalidated in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review procedure after being challenged by GPS device maker Garmin Ltd in 2012.

Companies that are frequent targets of patent suits, including Apple Inc and Google Inc, have taken advantage of the patent office procedure, known as inter partes review (IPR), in unexpectedly high numbers since it was put in place in 2012.

These reviews allow anyone to challenge the validity of a patent far more cheaply and quickly than in a U.S. federal court.

The high court justices will now consider whether the patent office is improperly interpreting the patents that come before it in the reviews. Critics say this leads to a high rate of patent cancellations."