Joe Nocera, Columnist

Thanks for Nothing, Supreme Court. You Left Patents a Mess.

A far more radical approach is needed to balance the needs of tech companies, drug makers, universities and inventors.

April 25, 2018 at 1:29 PM UTC

Joe Nocera is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the host and writer of the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

Things used to be so simple.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Along with class-action lawsuits and hedge-fund activism, a patent dispute is sand in the gears of commerce: costly, time-consuming and distracting. Tuesday’s Supreme Court patent decision in Oil States Energy Services LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC is a reminder of just what a mess the patent system has become.

The issue before the court was narrow: whether a relatively new mechanism for resolving disputes, called the inter partes review, was constitutional. In a 7-2 decision, the court said, correctly, that it was.