SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC
The Supreme Court ruled that companies accused of patent infringement cannot use the old defense of unreasonable delay (laches) to block damages claims filed within the six-year window Congress set in the Patent Act.
The decision extends the Court's 2014 copyright ruling in Petrella to patents, reinforcing that once Congress sets a firm time limit for suing, judges cannot second-guess it by applying their own fairness-based delay rules.
“[I]n the face of a statute of limitations enacted by Congress, laches cannot be invoked to bar legal relief”
The Court's central holding applying Petrella's rule to patent damages claims.
How it got here: A federal trial court granted summary judgment to First Quality on laches and equitable estoppel; the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld the laches ruling, and SCA sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
SCA Hygiene, which makes adult incontinence products, told First Quality in 2003 that First Quality's products infringed SCA's patent. First Quality said its own earlier patent invalidated SCA's. SCA sought a reexamination of its patent, which the Patent Office confirmed valid in 2007. SCA then sued First Quality for infringement in 2010, seeking damages for infringement occurring within the Patent Act's six-year lookback period.
The question before the Court
Can a company being sued for patent infringement use the old legal defense of "laches" — unreasonable delay in suing — to block a claim for damages that Congress said could be brought within six years?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that a company sued for patent infringement cannot use laches (an equitable defense based on unreasonable, prejudicial delay in suing) to block a damages claim filed within the six-year window Congress set in the Patent Act. Because Congress itself chose a fixed time limit, courts cannot layer on their own case-by-case delay analysis to cut that window short.
This follows directly from the Court's 2014 copyright ruling in Petrella, which held the same thing about the Copyright Act's three-year filing deadline. The Court found no meaningful difference between the two statutes and rejected arguments that patent law had developed a special, contrary practice, concluding that Congress's six-year damages period is the only timeliness rule that applies.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Patent holders can now sue for damages any time within six years of an infringing act without fear that a court will throw out the claim simply because they waited a long time to sue. Companies that develop products based on existing patents lose one defense they previously relied on, though they can still argue equitable estoppel if the patent holder's conduct actively misled them.
What changes now
The Federal Circuit's judgment is vacated in part and the case is sent back for further proceedings consistent with this ruling. The Court did not disturb the Federal Circuit's separate holding that genuine factual disputes remain about whether equitable estoppel — a different defense based on misleading conduct — might still bar First Quality's liability, so that issue remains open on remand. This is a final decision on the laches question.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether laches remains available as a defense against equitable relief like injunctions, nor whether equitable estoppel bars First Quality's liability — that issue, where genuine factual disputes exist, was left for further proceedings on remand.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Breyer
“And for more than a century courts with virtual unanimity have applied laches in patent damages cases.”Breyer's central objection that a long historical practice supported laches as a patent damages defense.
Justice Breyer argued that a real 'gap' still exists even with the Patent Act's six-year damages limit, because a patentee can wait years while an infringer invests heavily before suing, allowing strategic delay. He argued Congress intended Section 282's 'unenforceability' defense to codify laches, citing decades of near-unanimous lower-court decisions applying laches to patent damages claims even after a limitations period existed. He also stated he believes Petrella itself was wrongly decided.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its 2014 decision in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which held that laches — an equitable defense based on a plaintiff's unreasonable, prejudicial delay — cannot block a damages claim filed within a limitations period Congress itself wrote into a statute.
- Because Congress sets a hard deadline through a statute of limitations, letting judges apply laches on top of that deadline would let courts override Congress's own judgment about how much delay is acceptable, exceeding the judiciary's proper role.
- Laches historically developed in equity courts to fill gaps where no fixed time limit existed; where Congress has already set a limitations period, there is no such gap for the doctrine to fill.
- The Court found the Patent Act's six-year damages lookback period, in Section 286, works the same way as the Copyright Act's three-year filing deadline in Petrella, even though the Patent Act's period runs backward from the filing date rather than forward from accrual.
- The Court rejected the argument that Section 282's reference to 'unenforceability' as a defense codified a patent-specific laches rule allowing dismissal of timely damages claims, finding no clear, unbroken consensus of pre-1952 cases supporting such an unusual dual system of both a statute of limitations and a laches bar on damages.
- Having found no basis to treat patent damages claims differently from copyright damages claims, the Court concluded that laches cannot bar recovery for infringement occurring within the six-year period specified in Section 286.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. (572 U. S. ___)
The Court extends and applies Petrella's rule that laches cannot bar timely damages claims to the patent context.
Abrogates A. C. Aukerman Co. v. R. L. Chaides Constr. Co. (960 F. 2d 1020)
The Court rejects this Federal Circuit precedent's holding that laches can bar patent damages claims within the limitations period.