A significant challenge to federal patent policy has failed without a court ever ruling on whether the disputed practice was actually lawful.
The Federal Circuit’s decision in US Inventor, Inc. v. Squires, Case No. 24-2378, decided in August 2026, illustrates why Article III standing must be treated as a central pillar of litigation strategy rather than a procedural afterthought.
Inventor-advocacy organisations challenged language the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office places on issued patents describing the statutory “right to exclude” others from making, using, or selling a patented invention.
The organisations contended the language could mislead patent owners because, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., proving infringement no longer automatically entitles a patent owner to a permanent injunction.
Rather than ruling on that substantive question, the Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal because none of the organisations established the concrete injury required to seek prospective relief from the court.
The plaintiffs’ principal argument was that the PTO’s language forced them to devote resources to educating inventors about the practical consequences of the eBay ruling on injunctive relief.
The Federal Circuit rejected that theory by applying the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which held that organisations cannot manufacture standing simply by spending money to oppose government conduct they disagree with.
The court found that educating members and responding to perceived misinformation reflected the organisations’ voluntary decision to oppose PTO practice, rather than a direct injury inflicted upon them by the government.
The organisations also relied on Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, where the Supreme Court previously recognised organisational standing after discriminatory housing practices directly impaired an existing nonprofit counselling service.
The Federal Circuit found the inventor organisations were in a materially different position, as their theory depended on other inventors misunderstanding the PTO’s language rather than the challenged conduct directly impairing their own services.
US Inventor separately attempted associational standing, which allows organisations to litigate on behalf of members, but that approach also failed under scrutiny applied from Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission.
Three inventors submitted declarations saying they had previously misunderstood the patent language, but all three had since learned about the eBay ruling and understood that permanent injunctive relief was no longer automatic.
Under City of Los Angeles v. Lyons and Murthy v. Missouri, a plaintiff seeking prospective relief must demonstrate a real and immediate threat of future injury, not merely a completed past harm.
Because the identified members already understood the limitation they claimed the PTO language obscured, they could not plausibly show an imminent risk of being misled again, ending their associational standing argument.
The dismissal left the underlying policy controversy entirely unresolved, meaning the question of whether PTO language misleads patent owners about their enforcement rights remains an open legal question.
For technology businesses and patent holders, the practical stakes of that unresolved question are significant, as injunctive relief affects licensing leverage, enforcement strategy, competitive positioning, and overall patent valuation.
The decision carries a broader warning for organisations considering Administrative Procedure Act challenges: policy disagreement cannot be converted into constitutional injury simply by allocating staff time or communications resources to opposing a government practice.
Standing analysis, including identifying a genuinely injured party facing a continuing or realistically recurring harm, must be completed before substantial resources are committed to developing the substantive case.
As the Federal Circuit’s ruling makes plain, even a legitimate and important dispute over intellectual property law cannot reach judicial resolution unless litigants first establish the concrete injury that gives a court jurisdiction to act.
Standing, in strategic litigation against federal agencies, is not merely the courthouse door but an essential element of designing a case that can actually be decided on its merits.