Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. v. Alkermes PLC

Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that federal patent law, as construed in Brulotte v. Thys Co. and Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, does not require a patentee to disgorge royalties it collected after the licensed patent expired, and in permitting a state-law doctrine—New York’s Voluntary Payment Doctrine—to authorize the patentee’s retention of those royalties notwithstanding this Court’s categorical rule that all benefits from a patent must end when the patent expires—a rule that gives effect to Congress’s decision, under the Constitution’s “limited Times” power, to grant only a time-limited patent monopoly. In so ruling, the court of appeals expanded the period of invention exclusivity beyond the statutory grant of the patent.

Whether an arbitrator “manifestly disregards” governing federal law w ithin the meaning of the Federal Arbitration Act when the arbitrator acknowledges federal law—here, Brulotte’s prohibition on post-expiration patent royalties—finds that all post-expiration payments were unlawful, and orders restitution as the remedy for a federal law violation, but then invokes conflicting state law to apply that rule to only part of the remedy.