By Kevin E. Noonan — U.S. patent law grants patent owners the right to grant licenses to their patents in analogy to landlords granting rents to real property as a license to use without obtaining ownership. 35 U.S.C. §§ 261-262. But the complexities that can ensue, both in what is licensed and when it is licensed (and when those licenses expire) can be daunting to the extent that the parties don’t always agree. Such a case was decided by the Federal Circuit in Roche Diagnostics Corp. v. Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC. The technology relates to immunoassays that use in electrochemiluminescence…
