The Supreme Court has been looking more into patent law
Joseph S. Miller, 2017 - Awarded Ernest P. Rogers Chair of Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition Law, University of Georgia; “Which Supreme Court Cases Influenced Recent Supreme Court IP Decisions? A Citation Study”; https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2172&context=fac_artchop
The U.S. Supreme Court has, of late, been deciding more patent law cases. Given the special national jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—which hears, among other things, all appeals “arising under” U.S. patent laws2—that means the Supreme Court has been reviewing more Federal Circuit cases. As Court watchers note, the Federal Circuit’s patent jurisprudence has not fared well. For example, Ronald Mann,3 who covers “commercial law and intellectual property” for SCOTUSblog,4 recapped the Court’s May 2017 decision on the scope of the patent exhaustion doctrine this way:
The court has been deciding a steady diet of patent cases for much of the last decade and has been rejecting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s rulings in those cases almost routinely; the Federal Circuit is now 0 for 5 in the current term, by far the worst record of any of the federal courts of appeals.5
In short, there are more Supreme Court patent cases reversing more Federal Circuit decisions. The Court’s increasing interest in patent law, which John Duffy first brought to light graphically fifteen years ago,6 has only intensified: In its October 2013 Term, when it heard six patent cases on appeal from the Federal Circuit, the Court reached a level of engagement with patent law it had not entertained since at least the 1940s.7 Similarly, in its October 2016 Term, the Court heard five patent cases on appeal from the Federal Circuit.