The landscape for patent law has changed more quickly over the last five years than it had in preceding decades. The America Invents Act, which was enacted in September 2011, may be the most comprehensive and significant change to patent law in decades, and recent case law appears to be accelerating changes. For example, Mayo Collaborative Services. v. Prometheus Labs, 566 U.S. 66 (2012), changed how patent-eligible subject matter is determined and what currently is patentable eligible. Alice v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), dramatically changed the landscape for software and internet based technology patents and the law on what is patent eligible subject matter. Samsung v. Apple, 137 S. Ct. 429 (2016), is likely to dramatically change the landscape for damages in design patent infringement. Finally, Life Technologies v. Promega, 197 L.Ed.2d 33 (U.S. 2017), tests the limits of liability and the extra territorial reach of U.S. law for infringement abroad. These cases profoundly changed to the way courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office treat patents and patent ­applications, in Article III courts and administrative agencies.

The U.S. Supreme Court will have ample opportunity, if it chooses, to revisit the issues that have been raised by these cases over the next few terms. The untimely loss of Justice Antonin Scalia makes predicting the direction of the Supreme Court, ever a challenge, even more difficult. With the recent nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump made clear his intentions to fill Scalia’s vacancy with a similarly minded jurist.

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