The current U.S. Supreme Court term promises to have significant impact on intellectual property law and practice. The Court has already ruled on one IP case so far this term, Medtronic v. Mirowski Family Ventures, and is scheduled to rule on nine more. This is an increase from the six IP cases decided in the Court's last term, demonstrating a continued broad interest in copyright, trademarks, and patents. In its last term, the Court took on “expert” doctrines — such as exhaustion and first sale — in both the patent and copyright contexts. Through these boundary doctrines, the Court made clear its interest in sculpting the edges and limits of intellectual property laws.

One macro-level trend evident from the last term's decisions was the Supreme Court's commitment to optimizing IP. The Court's recent decision in Medtronic represents a continuation of that trend, clarifying that neither maximization nor minimization is the goal.

In Medtronic, the Supreme Court put an end to procedural shifting of the evidentiary burden in certain patent cases. The Federal Circuit had held that in cases where a licensee sues for declaratory judgment that it is not infringing a licensed patent, the licensee carried the burden to prove non-infringement. In ordinary patent cases, the patentee (rather than the alleged infringer) carries the burden of proving infringement, regardless of who initiates the litigation. The Federal Circuit's burden-shifting jurisprudence made it less likely that licensees would be cleared of infringing a licensor's patent.