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Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. Normally when a federal case gets ap

Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. Normally when a federal case gets appealed, it goes to the court of appeals for the part of the country where the case originated. But appeals in patent cases go exclusively to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). This has led to the CAFC diverging significantly from traditional interpretation of patent law and to several strong rebukes from the Supreme Court, thanks in large part to the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law. Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court -- would do a lot to roll back the overzealous expansions of patent law we've seen in recent decades.

Trill-I-Am 10y ago
Why does concentration of jurisdiction inherently lead to expansive patent readings?
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  The comment you replied to suggested that it's partly because of "the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law." That is, these judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansiveness, which means that their baseline for what's normal may be skewed, or they may be primed for expansiveness.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansivenes How does that solve the problem? Wouldn't normal appeals courts see the exact same set of cases as the patent circuit currently does, under this proposal?
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      If patent cases were distributed geographically the way other cases are, then in theory the other circuits would see patent cases become a small fraction of their caseload, which reduces the chance of the feedback-loop problem in any specific circuit. In reality, probably most cases would end up in the Fifth Circuit because that's the one that gets appeals from the Eastern District of Texas, but that's when you can step in and start pushing to avoid the venue-shopping problem that weighs down East Texas with patent cases.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  Patent attorneys tend to have a pro-patent bias, and these attitudes seem to have rubbed off on Federal Circuit judges. Most obviously, a significant minority of Federal Circuit judges have been patent lawyers themselves, whereas judges on other courts almost never come from a patent law background. But beyond that, the heavy load of patent cases on the court's docket means that the judges of the Federal Circuit are constantly interacting with patent lawyers. In addition to hearing their arguments in the courtroom, they read the same patent law publications as the lawyers, hire young patent lawyers to clerk for them, and are invited to speak at events organized by the patent bar. [0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
dave_sullivan 10y ago
> Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? > cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions. > Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. > Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court I think we agree on the principal that one court shouldn't have that much power (unless we're talking about the supreme court I suppose, but that serves a different purpose), how would a change like that even be implemented? Would laws have to be passed state by state or would federal law supersede that? Is there a better way to reduce the power of patent trolls? I haven't heard any, and I've followed the issue on and off for a good decade now without seeing much change.
- comex 10y ago
  All US patent law is federal, as authority over copyright and patents is one of the things explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution [1]; the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the one that tried this case, is a federal court [2]. The Federal Circuit's jurisdiction over patent cases comes from federal law, specifically 28 USC § 1295 [3], so altering it would 'just' be a matter of amending that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas#Patent_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...

Trill-I-Am 10y ago

Why does concentration of jurisdiction inherently lead to expansive patent readings?

GavinMcG 10y ago
The comment you replied to suggested that it's partly because of "the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law." That is, these judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansiveness, which means that their baseline for what's normal may be skewed, or they may be primed for expansiveness.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansivenes How does that solve the problem? Wouldn't normal appeals courts see the exact same set of cases as the patent circuit currently does, under this proposal?
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    If patent cases were distributed geographically the way other cases are, then in theory the other circuits would see patent cases become a small fraction of their caseload, which reduces the chance of the feedback-loop problem in any specific circuit. In reality, probably most cases would end up in the Fifth Circuit because that's the one that gets appeals from the Eastern District of Texas, but that's when you can step in and start pushing to avoid the venue-shopping problem that weighs down East Texas with patent cases.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Patent attorneys tend to have a pro-patent bias, and these attitudes seem to have rubbed off on Federal Circuit judges. Most obviously, a significant minority of Federal Circuit judges have been patent lawyers themselves, whereas judges on other courts almost never come from a patent law background. But beyond that, the heavy load of patent cases on the court's docket means that the judges of the Federal Circuit are constantly interacting with patent lawyers. In addition to hearing their arguments in the courtroom, they read the same patent law publications as the lawyers, hire young patent lawyers to clerk for them, and are invited to speak at events organized by the patent bar. [0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...

dave_sullivan 10y ago

> Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? > cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions. > Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. > Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court I think we agree on the principal that one court shouldn't have that much power (unless we're talking about the supreme court I suppose, but that serves a different purpose), how would a change like that even be implemented? Would laws have to be passed state by state or would federal law supersede that? Is there a better way to reduce the power of patent trolls? I haven't heard any, and I've followed the issue on and off for a good decade now without seeing much change.

comex 10y ago
All US patent law is federal, as authority over copyright and patents is one of the things explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution [1]; the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the one that tried this case, is a federal court [2]. The Federal Circuit's jurisdiction over patent cases comes from federal law, specifically 28 USC § 1295 [3], so altering it would 'just' be a matter of amending that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas#Patent_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...