The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed ready to hand a victory to patent holders in a closely watched antitrust case that could have a broad impact on intellectual property law.
Though justices seemed divided at oral argument in the case Illinois Tool Works v. Independent Ink, they seemed untroubled by the prospect of tossing aside a 58-year-old precedent that puts patent holders at a disadvantage when competitors sue them for antitrust violations.
Under the 1947 International Salt v. United States case and other decisions following it, if a product has a patent, it is presumed to have the requisite "market power" that makes it illegal to "tie" the sale of the patented product to another product. That presumption puts the burden in court on a patent holder to disprove that it has unfair market power.
Details here from Tony Mauro of Legal Times via Law.com.