No State Sovereign Immunity for University of Minnesota in IPR
Written June 18, 2019
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 14, 2019, held that 11th Amendment Sovereign Immunity does not protect patents owned by individual states from being cancelled via inter partes review (IPR). Regents of the Univ. of Minn. v. LSI Corporation, Fed. Cir., No. 18-01559, 6/14/19.
The University of Minnesota must now face IPR challenges to patents it owns covering chip and wireless technologies. The Federal Circuit previously held that Native American tribal immunity does not protect tribal-owned patents from IPR challenges.
The Court went on to state that “the differences between state and tribal sovereign immunity do not warrant a different result than in Saint Regis. We therefore conclude that state sovereign immunity does not apply to IPR proceedings.”