Patent enforcement by Texas-based DataTreasury Corp.
("DataTreasury") was a key motivation for the creation of
Covered Business Method Review ("CBM") proceedings.
Senator Charles Schumer of New York, referring to DataTreasury,
explained that "one company has made a cottage industry out of
extracting legal settlements by exploiting a fuzzy part of the law
on patents."1 To address this concern, Schumer
inserted the provision that created CBM proceedings into the
America Invents Act ("AIA").2
Once Congress enacted the AIA, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board
("PTAB") instituted CBM reviews of several DataTreasury
patents and invalidated them under 35 U.S.C. §
101.3 The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's
decisions without opinion.4 DataTreasury then petitioned
the Supreme Court, claiming that it had developed "some of the
most valuable and thoroughly validated patents in the United
States," which had generated "hundreds of millions of
dollars in license fees" before the
