“This Court long has recognized that a patent is the private property of its owner, who has the constitutional right to pursue an injunction to stop infringers of the patent and to seek infringement damages before a jury in a court of law. In Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, 584 U.S. 325 (2018), the Court held that Congress constitutionally could authorize the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (‘PTO’) to take ‘a second look at an earlier administrative grant of a patent’ and reconsider the patentability of its claims during the life of the patent monopoly. Id. at 336. Administrative re-adjudication of the validity of existing patents is justified under Article III of the Constitution insofar as it allows the government to vindicate the public’s ‘interest in seeing that patent monopolies are kept within their legitimate scope.’ Id. at 336-37. But claims by a holder of an expired patent for past damages from infringements do not raise the same public-interest concern because the government is not being used to stop potential innovations in the marketplace. The question presented is:”
“Whether the PTO has the authority to conduct administrative adjudications regarding the validity of expired patents, and thereby extinguish private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury, even though the patent owner no longer possesses the right to exclude the public from its invention.”
