Two weeks ago we discussed Vanda Pharmaceuticals’ ambitious cert petition asking the Supreme Court to discontinue the “reasonable expectation of success” standard for patent obviousness that for decades has been a mainstay of patent law.

Vanda argued that the Court should instead adopt a “predictable results” standard, which would have made patents more difficult to challenge and thereby significantly impacted the pharma and biologics industries. Unsurprisingly, the Court today denied Vanda’s petition, leaving the obviousness standard unchanged.