High Court To Hear Patent Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a lawsuit between Stanford University and pharmaceutical giant Roche that involves the patent rights of research universities relying on federal funds. The justices say they will consider Stanford’s bid to revive its lawsuit against a Roche unit alleging patent infringement of technology that measures the concentration of HIV in blood plasma. The university says it owns the technology because the inventor worked at Stanford while conducting NIH-funded research. But Roche says the Stanford researcher also signed a contract that gave the company patent rights to anything that resulted from their collaboration. A federal appeals court sided with Roche last year, saying the company cannot be sued because it is a co-owner of the disputed patents. The case should clarify the Bayh-Dole Act, a 1980 law that established a system for determining who owns the rights to inventions created with federal funds. Stanford contends that the law “carefully restricts the circumstances in which an individual inventor may acquire an ownership interest in a federally funded invention.” Roche counters that “nothing in the act provided Stanford with the power to void a prior, otherwise valid assignment of patent rights.” The justices will hear arguments and rule in the first half of next year.