Veto of Apple Ruling Likely to Upend Big Patent Battles
The Obama administration’s decision to overturn an international trade ruling against Apple Inc. — the first such veto in more than 25 years — promises to upend long-running battles over intellectual property in the smartphone market and change the strategies some of the world’s biggest technology companies use to defend their inventions.
Increasingly, those companies have been using patents to try to hobble rivals in a mobile-device market expected to top $400 billion this year. In 2012, the number of patent cases filed in the U.S. jumped nearly 30 percent from a year earlier to 5,189, according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.