The Federal Circuit’s decision in US Inventor, Inc. v. Squires, Case No. 24-2378 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 21, 2026), reinforces a significant obstacle facing organizations seeking judicial review of federal patent policy: neither resources spent responding to government conduct nor a member’s completed past injury necessarily creates Article III standing to seek prospective relief.
Applying the Supreme Court’s decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the court held that inventor-advocacy organizations could not establish standing merely because they spent resources educating inventors about what they considered misleading language on the cover of issued patents. US Inventor also failed to establish associational standing because the three members it identified already understood the effect of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. and therefore did not face a concrete risk of being misled again.
The court consequently never reached the unusual patent-law issue that produced the dispute: whether the PTO’s unqualified description of a patent’s statutory “right to exclude” is misleading after eBay made permanent injunctive relief dependent on traditional equitable principles.
Background of the Dispute
The challenged language appears on every newly issued U.S. patent. Tracking 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(1), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states that the patent grants its owner the right to exclude others from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing the patented invention.
US Inventor and other plaintiffs contended that this language became misleading after the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006).
Before eBay, the Federal Circuit had described a “general rule” under which a prevailing patent owner would receive a permanent injunction absent sufficiently exceptional circumstances. In eBay, the Supreme Court rejected that patent-specific approach and required courts to apply the traditional four-factor test governing equitable relief.
A patent owner seeking a permanent injunction therefore must establish irreparable injury, inadequacy of monetary remedies, a balance of hardships supporting equitable relief, and consistency with the public interest.
The plaintiffs argued that this change meant the patent cover conveyed an overly absolute understanding of the “right to exclude.” They sued the PTO under the Administrative Procedure Act, alleging unlawful withholding or delay of rulemaking, arbitrary and capricious agency action, and action beyond the PTO’s statutory authority. They sought notice-and-comment rulemaking, an injunction against continued use of the challenged language, and a declaration that the existing language was unlawful.
Although the complaint included additional plaintiffs, only three inventor-advocacy organizations defended their standing on appeal: US Inventor, the Inventor’s Association of South Central Kansas, and the Inventors Network of Minnesota.
The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of Article III standing. The Federal Circuit affirmed.
Article III Required a Concrete Threat of Future Injury
Because the standing question was not unique to patent law, the Federal Circuit applied regional circuit law, here Fourth Circuit law, to its review of the dismissal.
The constitutional principles were familiar. A plaintiff seeking injunctive relief must show a concrete and particularized injury that is actual or imminent, fairly traceable to the challenged conduct, and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. Declaratory relief likewise requires a controversy having sufficient immediacy and reality.
Organizations have two potential routes to Article III standing. They may establish organizational standing based on injuries suffered in their own right, or they may assert associational standing on behalf of members who would themselves have standing.
Neither route worked here.
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine Rejects Diversion-of-Resources Standing
The organizations principally argued that the PTO’s continued use of the disputed patent-cover language forced them to devote additional time and resources to educating inventors about the consequences of eBay.
US Inventor, for example, alleged that it had to develop guidance concerning investment, research, and business decisions because inventors might otherwise misunderstand the practical value of their patent rights. The other organizations similarly alleged that they had diverted resources from their usual activities.
The Supreme Court rejected that type of theory in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. 367 (2024).
The organizations challenging FDA action in Alliance argued that they had been forced to spend additional resources on advocacy and education. The Supreme Court held that those voluntary expenditures could not manufacture an Article III injury. If organizations could obtain standing merely by spending money in opposition to government policies, virtually every advocacy organization could create standing to challenge policies it disliked.
The Federal Circuit found the same defect here.
The inventor organizations’ alleged injuries consisted of educating members, developing guidance, responding to perceived misinformation, and shifting organizational resources toward the disputed policy. Those activities demonstrated the organizations’ opposition to the PTO’s conduct, but they did not establish a concrete injury inflicted on the organizations themselves.
Fourth Circuit precedent independently supported that conclusion. In Lane v. Holder, 703 F.3d 668 (4th Cir. 2012), the court rejected organizational standing based on resources spent educating members, responding to inquiries, or undertaking litigation in reaction to legislation.
The combined effect of Alliance and Lane is significant for organizations seeking to challenge federal agency policies. Advocacy costs caused by an organization’s decision to respond to government action do not, standing alone, create the injury required by Article III.
Why Havens Realty Did Not Save the Organizations’ Claims
The organizations relied on Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363 (1982), which recognized standing where discriminatory housing practices impaired a nonprofit organization’s ability to provide counseling and referral services.
But Alliance expressly rejected the broad proposition that Havens Realty established a general diversion-of-resources theory of organizational standing.
The distinction rested on the nature of the injury.
In Havens Realty, false information about housing availability directly interfered with the organization’s existing counseling operation. The organization itself received misinformation that impaired the service it was already providing.
The inventor organizations were differently situated. They knew about eBay and therefore were not themselves being misled by the patent-cover language. Their alleged injury depended on unidentified third-party inventors receiving the supposedly inaccurate information and then causing the organizations to devote resources to correcting the misunderstanding.
The Federal Circuit also emphasized another distinction drawn in Alliance. The injury in Havens Realty resembled a traditionally recognized injury, which the Supreme Court compared to a retailer receiving defective goods from a manufacturer. The inventor organizations alleged nothing comparable. They were not unknowingly receiving or passing along defective information. They were deliberately attempting to correct information that they believed gave inventors a misleading understanding of their patent rights.
Finally, the challenged patent-cover language did not directly impede the organizations’ core activities. Their theory was instead that they had voluntarily taken on additional advisory activities in response to that language.
Those distinctions placed the case on the Alliance side of the line rather than the Havens Realty side.
Associational Standing Failed Because Past Confusion Was Not Future Injury
US Inventor also attempted to establish standing through its members.
Under Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333 (1977), an association may sue on behalf of its members when at least one member would have standing individually, the interests at issue are germane to the organization’s purpose, and neither the claim nor the requested relief requires individual member participation.
US Inventor submitted declarations from three inventor-members who stated that they had previously understood the patent cover to mean they possessed a guaranteed right to stop infringement.
The problem was that each declarant also acknowledged that he now understood the effect of eBay.
Because the lawsuit sought prospective declaratory and injunctive relief, past confusion was insufficient. Under City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983), a plaintiff seeking prospective relief must face a real and immediate threat of future harm. The Supreme Court more recently reiterated in Murthy v. Missouri that past harm matters only to the extent it supports a showing of imminent future injury.
The three identified inventors could no longer plausibly claim that the patent-cover language was likely to mislead them again. They already knew that injunctive relief was not guaranteed after eBay.
The other two advocacy organizations had an additional problem: their complaint did not plead associational standing at all. It alleged only organizational injuries based on diverted resources and identified no injured members.
Amendment would not cure the defect. The plaintiffs proposed only to clarify that they were asserting associational standing for the other organizations as well. They did not identify additional facts showing that any member faced an imminent threat of future injury. The Federal Circuit therefore affirmed the district court’s conclusion that amendment would be futile.
The Court Did Not Reach the Patent “Right to Exclude” Theory
The jurisdictional ruling left the plaintiffs’ substantive patent-law argument unresolved.
Section 154 expressly requires a patent to contain a grant of the “right to exclude.” eBay, however, establishes that proving patent infringement does not automatically entitle a patent owner to a permanent injunction actually preventing the infringer from continuing the accused activity.
Those principles operate at different levels.
Section 154 defines the statutory patent right. eBay governs the availability of a particular equitable remedy when that right has been infringed. Nothing in eBay purported to rewrite § 154 or eliminate the statutory right to exclude. Instead, the Supreme Court rejected an automatic-remedy rule and required patent owners to satisfy the traditional principles governing injunctions.
The distinction weakens any suggestion that the patent-cover language became legally false simply because eBay changed the standards for injunctive relief.
But that does not entirely eliminate the practical concern underlying the plaintiffs’ challenge. An inexperienced patent owner could understand the phrase “right to exclude” as meaning that successful infringement litigation necessarily results in an order stopping the infringer. eBay establishes that successful infringement litigation does not necessarily produce that remedy.
Those are different questions. The statutory phrase may accurately describe the legal right while still creating expectations about enforcement that do not reflect the practical limits on obtaining an injunction.
US Inventor v. Squires decides neither issue. Without Article III standing, the Federal Circuit had no occasion to determine whether the PTO’s existing language is misleading or whether the agency should provide additional explanation concerning the limits on injunctive relief.
The patent-cover language therefore remains unchanged.
Practical Implications
The most immediate lesson concerns organizations considering APA challenges to federal patent policy.
The importance of the policy dispute does not reduce the plaintiff’s burden to establish Article III standing. An advocacy organization ordinarily cannot create that injury by devoting additional resources to educating members, criticizing agency action, or counteracting information with which it disagrees. A stronger organizational-standing theory requires government conduct that directly interferes with the organization’s own operations in the manner contemplated by Havens Realty and Alliance.
Associational plaintiffs face a related requirement. When prospective relief is sought, they must identify at least one member who faces a concrete future injury. A member who experienced the alleged harm in the past may be insufficient if circumstances have changed so that the injury is unlikely to recur.
This is not the first time US Inventor has encountered that barrier. In US Inventor, Inc. v. USPTO, No. 24-1396 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 3, 2025), the organization challenged the PTO’s denial of a petition seeking changes to discretionary institution of inter partes and post-grant review proceedings. The Federal Circuit rejected associational standing because the asserted risk to members depended on a speculative chain of possible future events.
The two decisions illustrate different applications of the same constitutional constraint. In the 2025 case, the asserted future injury to members was too speculative. In Squires, advocacy expenditures could not create organizational injury, while the members actually identified by US Inventor already understood the alleged misinformation and therefore lacked a realistic threat of being injured by it again.
For patent owners, investors, licensees, and businesses evaluating patent assets, the dispute also underscores an important distinction between patent ownership and patent enforcement.
A patent continues to confer the statutory right to exclude described in § 154. But the ability to obtain a permanent injunction against an infringer through district-court litigation depends on satisfying the equitable requirements imposed by eBay. That distinction can affect patent valuation, licensing leverage, enforcement strategy, and assessments of whether successful litigation is likely to produce actual marketplace exclusivity rather than monetary relief.
Conclusion
US Inventor v. Squires is a standing decision arising from a broader debate over patent remedies.
Its principal doctrinal significance lies in the Federal Circuit’s application of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Advocacy organizations cannot manufacture Article III standing by spending resources responding to government conduct. Havens Realty remains relevant where challenged conduct directly interferes with an organization’s own operations, but it does not create a general diversion-of-resources pathway into federal court.
Associational standing imposes a separate constraint. Organizations seeking prospective relief must identify members who face an actual or imminent future injury. Past confusion does not establish standing when the identified individuals already possess the information necessary to avoid being injured in the same way again.
Those jurisdictional rules prevented the Federal Circuit from resolving the underlying patent-policy dispute. Section 154 continues to describe patents as granting a “right to exclude,” while eBay separately requires patentees seeking permanent injunctions to satisfy traditional equitable principles.
Whether the PTO’s existing language is misleading, or whether the agency should explain that distinction more fully, remains unresolved.
Key Takeaways
- Advocacy expenditures, member education, and resources spent responding to disputed government conduct generally do not establish organizational standing after FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
- Havens Realty remains applicable where challenged conduct directly interferes with an organization’s own operations, but it does not create a broad diversion-of-resources theory of Article III injury.
- Associations seeking declaratory or injunctive relief must identify members facing an actual or imminent future injury. Past injury alone is insufficient when recurrence is unlikely.
- The Federal Circuit did not decide whether the PTO’s use of the statutory phrase “right to exclude” on patent covers is misleading after eBay.
- Section 154’s statutory right to exclude is distinct from entitlement to a permanent injunction. After eBay, obtaining that remedy in district court remains subject to traditional equitable requirements.
Related Analysis
- US Inventor, Inc. v. USPTO: the same organization’s earlier challenge to PTO rulemaking, where associational standing failed because the alleged future injury to members was too speculative.
- Socket Solutions v. Import Global: the continuing effect of eBay on patent injunctions and the requirement that irreparable harm be independently established rather than presumed from infringement.
- Ridge Corp. v. Kirk NationaLease: prospective relief, speculative irreparable harm, and the requirement under Murthy that past conduct support a genuine likelihood of future injury.
- Hafeman v. Google: separate limits on Federal Circuit review of PTO decision-making, illustrating how threshold jurisdictional rules can prevent appellate resolution of challenges to agency action.