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Based on the actual opinion the title seems completely wrong. The ruling simply makes the decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reviewable by th

Based on the actual opinion the title seems completely wrong. The ruling simply makes the decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reviewable by the agency director. The law was originally written to make the decisions by the PTAB non-reviewable unless the PTAB itself granted review. The Director of the Patent Office could not review and/or reject the decision, only nominate members of the PTAB. Now Smith & Nephew can appeal the decision of the PTAB to the Director of the Patent Office. Then if they don't like that ruling they can appeal to the courts again. In practice it seems unlikely that the director will actually overrule the board but in theory they could. The principle being that someone must take accountability politically for executive decisions - either the President or a Principal Officer confirmed by the Senate. Anyone else is serving (at some level) under the Principle Officer who can review and/or override the decision. The President can then review the decision of the Principle Officer and/or fire the Principal Officer if necessary. The ultimate check on that power being voters electing the President. There are some nuances but the theory is you don't want the Executive Branch to be issuing unaccountable unreviewable decisions. In practice you might not get a review but there needs to be some kind of process that isn't completely impossible. It also means if there is a major screw up or scandal someone needs to own the ultimate decision. That doesn't always happen but it stops Congress from converting every government department into an opaque unaccountable "board" that continuously makes bad decisions yet there is no one who can be blamed.

dnadler 5y ago
Are you sure? This is my first time really reading a legal opinion, but this line at the end of the first paragraph seems pretty clear cut: "...the Federal Circuit invalidated the APJs’ tenure protections, making them removable at will by the Secretary." Followed immediately by: "Held: The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded." The 'judgment' here is referring to the original judgment that was issued and challenged in the Federal Circuit. It's totally possible that I'm reading this incorrectly, though
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  Skip the Syllabus. It is at the beginning and is legally dense. Start at the section labelled Opinion of the Court.
- flyingfences 5y ago
  In short, the holding by SCOTUS is that the appointment of the "judges" was correct, but the legal provision shielding their decisions from review by the Director of the PTO (or any other Principal Officer confirmed by the Senate) is unconstitutional. The Constitutional issue is that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board was established without any oversight of their key task: invalidating patents. Their decisions are not subject to review, and they cannot be removed from their appointments as a consequence of any decision that they deliver. They are wielding the power of Principal Officers regarding the rights of the people, but they are appointed through a procedure for Inferior Officers, without confirmation by the Senate. If the IOs were answerable to a PO (i.e., PTO Director or Secretary of Commerce), who is answerable in turn to the President, this exercise would be fine, but they answer to nobody; there is no arrangement for anybody in the Executive Branch to review this Board's decisions. The Government and another concerned party had argued that the Director had the power to choose which judges sat on any panel, thereby effectively removing "wrong" judges from making decisions, thereby effectively exercising control over the Board. The Federal Circuit held that this arrangement was insufficient, but could be remedied by allowing the Director to formally and completely remove judges from the Board if he took issue with their decisions. The Supreme Court agreed with the Circuit that the arrangement, as specified by law, is unconstitutional, but disagreed with the proposed remedy, preferring instead to merely invalidate the one provision of the law that shields the Board's decisions from review by the Director. SCOTUS vacated the Federal Circuit's decision (the decision that had been appealed to them) and remanded the case (i.e., the actual patent dispute, not the Constitutional issue surrounding it, which they have just resolved) down to the Director of the PTO, whom they have just decided has the authority to review the dispute.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xenadu02 5y ago
  flyingfences covered this but yes I am sure. The decision is narrowly tailored: the board and the judges' appointments to it are fine, so is the process to make the appointments. That makes the literal headline on the story nonsense.
- mrandish 5y ago
  > This is my first time really reading a legal opinion I enjoy reading SCOTUS opinions. Here are a couple meta things to keep in mind when reading high court opinions. First, SCOTUS is mostly focused on issues where lower courts have disagreed on a case or issue. The goal is that courts should be consistent because their job is to interpret the law. Juries are (mostly) responsible for interpreting facts. Elected legislatures are responsible for creating the laws. So, at the SCOTUS level they want to provide clarity about how to interpret fundamental issues of law and the constitution when lower courts interpret things in different ways. They usually are not primarily concerned with the specific outcome of some case. They want to fix potential 'bugs' in the system. In software programming terms, they want to fix problems with the language interpreter or parser, not so much the debug the program. When two supposedly compatible interpreters get different results from the same program code, they want to disambiguate the language rules. In fact, their opinions sometimes essentially concede, "We don't like the result of correctly interpreting this law (ie "program code") but the interpreter is running correctly. The legislature needs to fix the law. (ie write less ambiguous code)." Obviously, this sometimes clashes with the public's everyday understanding of courts pursuing 'justice.' A surprising number of laws have ambiguous wording, so it's interesting when I read a SCOTUS case where I hate the net effect of the decision but agree that it's correct. In a sense, writing laws shares much in common with software programming. Sometimes the code isn't doing what the programmer intended but it is running as written, or: bad legislators often blame the courts in the same way bad programmers blame the compiler or CPU.

dnadler 5y ago

Are you sure? This is my first time really reading a legal opinion, but this line at the end of the first paragraph seems pretty clear cut: "...the Federal Circuit invalidated the APJs’ tenure protections, making them removable at will by the Secretary." Followed immediately by: "Held: The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded." The 'judgment' here is referring to the original judgment that was issued and challenged in the Federal Circuit. It's totally possible that I'm reading this incorrectly, though

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Skip the Syllabus. It is at the beginning and is legally dense. Start at the section labelled Opinion of the Court.
flyingfences 5y ago
In short, the holding by SCOTUS is that the appointment of the "judges" was correct, but the legal provision shielding their decisions from review by the Director of the PTO (or any other Principal Officer confirmed by the Senate) is unconstitutional. The Constitutional issue is that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board was established without any oversight of their key task: invalidating patents. Their decisions are not subject to review, and they cannot be removed from their appointments as a consequence of any decision that they deliver. They are wielding the power of Principal Officers regarding the rights of the people, but they are appointed through a procedure for Inferior Officers, without confirmation by the Senate. If the IOs were answerable to a PO (i.e., PTO Director or Secretary of Commerce), who is answerable in turn to the President, this exercise would be fine, but they answer to nobody; there is no arrangement for anybody in the Executive Branch to review this Board's decisions. The Government and another concerned party had argued that the Director had the power to choose which judges sat on any panel, thereby effectively removing "wrong" judges from making decisions, thereby effectively exercising control over the Board. The Federal Circuit held that this arrangement was insufficient, but could be remedied by allowing the Director to formally and completely remove judges from the Board if he took issue with their decisions. The Supreme Court agreed with the Circuit that the arrangement, as specified by law, is unconstitutional, but disagreed with the proposed remedy, preferring instead to merely invalidate the one provision of the law that shields the Board's decisions from review by the Director. SCOTUS vacated the Federal Circuit's decision (the decision that had been appealed to them) and remanded the case (i.e., the actual patent dispute, not the Constitutional issue surrounding it, which they have just resolved) down to the Director of the PTO, whom they have just decided has the authority to review the dispute.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xenadu02 5y ago
flyingfences covered this but yes I am sure. The decision is narrowly tailored: the board and the judges' appointments to it are fine, so is the process to make the appointments. That makes the literal headline on the story nonsense.
mrandish 5y ago
> This is my first time really reading a legal opinion I enjoy reading SCOTUS opinions. Here are a couple meta things to keep in mind when reading high court opinions. First, SCOTUS is mostly focused on issues where lower courts have disagreed on a case or issue. The goal is that courts should be consistent because their job is to interpret the law. Juries are (mostly) responsible for interpreting facts. Elected legislatures are responsible for creating the laws. So, at the SCOTUS level they want to provide clarity about how to interpret fundamental issues of law and the constitution when lower courts interpret things in different ways. They usually are not primarily concerned with the specific outcome of some case. They want to fix potential 'bugs' in the system. In software programming terms, they want to fix problems with the language interpreter or parser, not so much the debug the program. When two supposedly compatible interpreters get different results from the same program code, they want to disambiguate the language rules. In fact, their opinions sometimes essentially concede, "We don't like the result of correctly interpreting this law (ie "program code") but the interpreter is running correctly. The legislature needs to fix the law. (ie write less ambiguous code)." Obviously, this sometimes clashes with the public's everyday understanding of courts pursuing 'justice.' A surprising number of laws have ambiguous wording, so it's interesting when I read a SCOTUS case where I hate the net effect of the decision but agree that it's correct. In a sense, writing laws shares much in common with software programming. Sometimes the code isn't doing what the programmer intended but it is running as written, or: bad legislators often blame the courts in the same way bad programmers blame the compiler or CPU.