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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...

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...