US Inventor v. Squires — Advocacy Groups Lack Standing to Challenge Patent-Cover Language

Background

Several inventor-advocacy organizations challenged the statement printed on issued patents that a patent grants its owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing the invention. The organizations argued that the statement became misleading after the Supreme Court’s eBay v. MercExchange decision ended the Federal Circuit’s near-automatic approach to permanent injunctions and required patent owners to satisfy the traditional four-factor equitable test.

The groups sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under the Administrative Procedure Act. They alleged that the agency unlawfully failed to revise the patent-cover language and that continued use of the language was arbitrary, capricious, and beyond the agency’s authority. The district court dismissed the case because the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing, and the organizations appealed.

The Court’s Holding

The Federal Circuit affirmed. It did not decide whether the patent-cover statement correctly describes the practical force of a patent after eBay. Instead, the court held that the organizations had not alleged the concrete, imminent injury required to ask a federal court for declaratory or injunctive relief.

The organizations could not establish standing in their own right merely by spending resources to educate members about the disputed language. Relying on the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the panel explained that an organization cannot manufacture standing by choosing to spend money opposing a government policy. The alleged misinformation did not directly interfere with the groups’ core operations in the narrow manner recognized in Havens Realty; rather, the groups said they had undertaken additional advocacy and advice-giving.

Associational standing also failed. US Inventor identified members who said they had once misunderstood the patent-cover language, but those members now understood the effect of eBay and therefore faced no plausible imminent risk of being misled again. The other organizations had not pleaded member-based injury at all. Amendment would have been futile because the proposed clarification did not cure the absence of a member facing future harm.

Key Takeaways

• The decision leaves the PTO’s patent-cover language in place without deciding whether that language is substantively misleading.
• An advocacy group’s decision to spend money educating members or opposing agency conduct does not, by itself, create organizational standing.
• For forward-looking relief, past confusion is not enough; a plaintiff must plausibly face a real and imminent threat of being harmed again.
• Patent-policy challengers must identify a concrete injury before courts will reach the merits of an Administrative Procedure Act claim.

Why It Matters

The ruling is important less for what it says about patent remedies than for the courthouse door it closes. Inventor groups sought a judicial declaration about the meaning of the patent right after eBay, but the panel treated that disagreement as an abstract policy dispute absent a presently injured plaintiff. Organizations planning similar challenges will need facts showing direct operational interference or an identifiable member who faces imminent harm—not simply added advocacy costs.

For patent owners, the familiar “right to exclude” language remains, but it should not be confused with an automatic right to an injunction. A patent supplies a legal right enforceable through available remedies; whether a court will stop an infringer prospectively still depends on the equitable factors required by eBay.