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A Functional Approach To Judicial Review Of Ptab Rulings On Mixed Questions Of Law And Fact, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
A Functional Approach To Judicial Review Of Ptab Rulings On Mixed Questions Of Law And Fact, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) has long relied on active appellate review to bring uniformity and clarity to patent law. It initially treated the PTO the same as the federal district courts, reviewing its factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. Following reversal by the Supreme Court in Dickinson v. Zurko, the Federal Circuit began giving greater deference to PTO factual findings. But it continued to review the PTO’s legal conclusions de novo, while coding an expansive list of disputed issues in patent cases as legal conclusions, even when they …
The Field Of Invention, Saurabh Vishnubhakat
The Field Of Invention, Saurabh Vishnubhakat
Faculty Scholarship
Federal courts can ill afford to ignore, assume, or improvise a pervasively important administrative power that the Patent Office exercises regularly and effectively: technology classification. This agency-court asymmetry has persisted for decades but has now become unmanageably problematic for two related reasons. First, Supreme Court guidance, patent reform legislation, and academic commentary have all broadly rejected long-standing patent exceptionalism in administrative law, while making the Patent Office a major substitute for federal courts in resolving patent disputes. Still, patent doctrine has been slow to correct, particularly in judicial deference to agency action. Second, criticisms of the patent system are highly …
Adrift On A Sea Of Uncertainty: Preserving Uniformity In Patent Law Post-Vornado Through Deference To The Federal Circuit, Larry D. Thompson
Adrift On A Sea Of Uncertainty: Preserving Uniformity In Patent Law Post-Vornado Through Deference To The Federal Circuit, Larry D. Thompson
Scholarly Works
Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982, and granted that court exclusive appellate jurisdiction over civil actions arising under patent law. Congress's primary goals in creating the Federal Circuit were to produce a more uniform patent jurisprudence and to reduce forum shopping based on favorable patent law. But in the 2002 decision of Holmes Group, Inc. v. Vornado Air Circulation Systems, the Supreme Court held that patent counterclaims alone could not create Federal Circuit jurisdiction. This decision not only overruled the Federal Circuit's longstanding jurisdictional rule, but also opened the door for Regional …
Judicial Deference To The Pto's Interpretations Of The Patent Law, R. Carl Moy
Judicial Deference To The Pto's Interpretations Of The Patent Law, R. Carl Moy
Faculty Scholarship
This article attempts to provide a basis upon which to preserve the Federal Circuit's current lawmaking primacy. Given the large body of preexisting literature on Chevron, USA, Inc v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it does not address whether Chevron allocates power between agencies and the courts optimally. Rather, the article examines how the PTO's statutory interpretations should be reviewed under Chevron. In Section I, the article places the examination in context by describing the Chevron decision and its general implications. Section II of the article examines how Chevron should be applied specifically in the context of reviewing statutory interpretations of …