This post, from guest author Jonathan Band, first appeared on the Disruptive Competition Project. While the case addresses sovereign immunity with respect to copyright claims, it directly implicates the Florida Prepaid decision which applied sovereign immunity to states who infringe patents. Later cases interpreted Florida Prepaid to bar actions by defendants seeking to invalidate state patents in federal court. Given the large number of lawsuits by state entity patent owners, this represents a serious issue in patent law.
On Tuesday, November 5, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Allen v. Cooper, a case considering the constitutionality of a statute limiting state sovereign immunity against claims for copyright infringement.