Any Jury, anywhere, at anytime:
Can decide to invalidate a
patent!
So long as the defendant gives them ample reason to do
so.
And unless the Appeals and Supreme agree that the Jury decided wrong
and the patent really is valid. The ruling stays forevermore!
Said
patent could have been successful in 10 previous cases in Texas, and a Jury can
still find it invalid.
The beauty of the power of the Jury over a patent
grant by the USPTO.
But again: the defendant has to give the Jury ample
reason for such a ruling. And proper prior art searching can be very costly.
The costs in the time of the attorneys, combined with the costs in the time of
the experts involved combined with the tools currently available for such
searches. So not all defendants argue against the invalidity of the
patents:
In the recent case of Oracle vs Google, Google decided to forgoe
it's arguments of patent invalidity.
Caveat: I'm not sure why Google
decided to forgoe it's invalidity claims, just that it was part of some of the
Legal rangling that ended up being agreed to.
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