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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law
Hyperactive Judges: An Empirical Study Of Judge-Dependent "Judicial Hyperactivity" In The Federal Circuit, Ted L. Field
Hyperactive Judges: An Empirical Study Of Judge-Dependent "Judicial Hyperactivity" In The Federal Circuit, Ted L. Field
Ted L. Field
This article presents an empirical study of the extent to which individual judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—which has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—engage in what William C. Rooklidge and Matthew F. Weil call “judicial hyperactivity.” This article defines “judicial hyperactivity” as a form of judicial activism in which a judge improperly “elevate[s] his or her judgment above that of another constitutionally significant actor (e.g., Congress, the President, [or] other Article III courts),” where this improper behavior is not necessarily driven by politics or ideology as is traditional judicial activism. This study considers the extent …
Informal Deference: A Historical, Empirical, And Normative Analysis Of Patent Claim Construction, Jonas Anderson, Peter S. Menell
Informal Deference: A Historical, Empirical, And Normative Analysis Of Patent Claim Construction, Jonas Anderson, Peter S. Menell
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Patent scope plays a central role in the operation of the patent system, making patent claim construction a critical aspect of just about every patent litigation. With the resurgence of patent jury trials in the 1980s, the allocation of responsibility for interpreting patent claims between trial judge and jury emerged as a salient issue. While the Supreme Court’s Markman decision usefully removed claim construction from the black box of jury deliberations notwithstanding its "mongrel" mixed fact/law character, the Federal Circuit's adherence to the view that claim construction is a pure question of law subject to de novo appellate review produced …