미국 특허법상 IPR 제도의 위헌성과 미국 연방대법원 Oil States 판결

In 2011, the U.S. Congress had introduced the IPR through the enactment of the AIA Act in place of the existing inter partes reexamination. In particular, the U.S. Congress had designed the IPR to effectively invalidate registration patents more quickly and more cheaply than the trial court's lawsuits. In line with the U.S. Congress's wish, the IPR has been actively utilized in the U.S. patent system as a way to effectively invalidate registration patents. In particular, the invalidation rate of registration patents through the IPR is 70 percent or more of the cases in which the IPR procedure has been instituted. In this regard, the IPR is a very important defense against the defendants who have been filed patent infringement lawsuits. Since the introduction of the IPR, the legal issue of the IPR’s unconstitutionality has been continuously raised. Therefore, the Supreme Court had accepted the petition of certiorari to terminate the controversy over IPR’s unconstitutionality through the Oil States decision. The Supreme Court expressly declared that the IPR is a system that do not violate to the U.S. Federal Constitution by deciding that the IPR does not violate the Article 3 Ⅲ and Seventh Amendment. Now the Supreme Court hopes that the IPR will effectively invalidate registration patents having a low patentability through the Oil States decision. The purpose of the Supreme Court's Oil States decision is the same as that of the previous rulings, that is eBay decision in 2006, Alice decision in 2014 and TC Heartland decision in 2017 that was declared to weaken the exercise of patent trolls' patent rights.