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Since the Fed Circuit has jurisdiction over the whole country, it makes sense that the SCOTUS overturns it so often. SCOTUS takes cases mostly to either overtu

Since the Fed Circuit has jurisdiction over the whole country, it makes sense that the SCOTUS overturns it so often. SCOTUS takes cases mostly to either overturn bad decisions or to settle Circuit splits (disagreements between Circuit courts). The later doesn't apply to the Fed. Circuit (very often). SCOTUS wouldn't take a case just to confirm the Fed. Cir.

moomin 9y ago
Nonetheless, in the matter of patent law, it seems to have been ignoring SCOTUS a lot.
xenadu02 9y ago
There is a history here. The CAFC is (or was) staffed by a bunch of former patent attorneys who never met a patent they didn't like. They're also the bumbling fools who made the idiotic ruling in the Oracle v Google case. They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible, something SCOTUS struck down recently. Those CAFC rulings were largely responsible for the "but do it on a computer" patents favored by patent trolls. See Alice/Banks, KSR v Teleflex, and several others.
- monochromatic 9y ago
  > They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible Oh come on. Have you read that line of cases? They're internally inconsistent and largely nonsensical. The fact that Alice was unanimous is pretty strong evidence that the Supreme Court doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to patent law.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    I have read those cases. They're nowhere near as inconsistent as you believe them to be. Diamond v. Diehr was a ruling in the time-honored tradition of "let's overturn precedent while extolling how much we're not overturning precedent," but its actual text only pushed the boundaries a little, basically saying "having software doesn't make the thing unpatentable." It was the CAFC's State St. decision that turned everything to rubbish, basically saying that patentability was a creative writing exercise in showing that you could tie the patent to something concrete, no matter how tenuous that part is to the core patent. In Bilski, SCOTUS went well out of its way to trash State St. at every opportunity. Alice reiterated that decision by making it clear that the machine part can't be an incidental afterthought but must be rather fundamental to the process, reinforcing rather than overturning the ideas in Diamond v Diehr.
    - monochromatic 9y ago
      Please explain to me how "abstract idea" has anything to do with prior art? Because that's what the Alice analysis actually looks like.

moomin 9y ago

Nonetheless, in the matter of patent law, it seems to have been ignoring SCOTUS a lot.

xenadu02 9y ago

There is a history here. The CAFC is (or was) staffed by a bunch of former patent attorneys who never met a patent they didn't like. They're also the bumbling fools who made the idiotic ruling in the Oracle v Google case. They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible, something SCOTUS struck down recently. Those CAFC rulings were largely responsible for the "but do it on a computer" patents favored by patent trolls. See Alice/Banks, KSR v Teleflex, and several others.

monochromatic 9y ago
> They ignored supreme court precedent in a series of rulings that made patenting abstract concepts possible Oh come on. Have you read that line of cases? They're internally inconsistent and largely nonsensical. The fact that Alice was unanimous is pretty strong evidence that the Supreme Court doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to patent law.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  I have read those cases. They're nowhere near as inconsistent as you believe them to be. Diamond v. Diehr was a ruling in the time-honored tradition of "let's overturn precedent while extolling how much we're not overturning precedent," but its actual text only pushed the boundaries a little, basically saying "having software doesn't make the thing unpatentable." It was the CAFC's State St. decision that turned everything to rubbish, basically saying that patentability was a creative writing exercise in showing that you could tie the patent to something concrete, no matter how tenuous that part is to the core patent. In Bilski, SCOTUS went well out of its way to trash State St. at every opportunity. Alice reiterated that decision by making it clear that the machine part can't be an incidental afterthought but must be rather fundamental to the process, reinforcing rather than overturning the ideas in Diamond v Diehr.
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Please explain to me how "abstract idea" has anything to do with prior art? Because that's what the Alice analysis actually looks like.