Mass Law Blog

American Lawyer: The USSC Has the CAFC Trembling in its Robes

by | Mar 17, 2009

“Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion”

Frank Herbert

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For those who have access to the American Lawyer (and I realize that at $430/year that’s a tiny percentage of lawyers, and almost no non-lawyers), there’s a interesting article in the March 2009 issue on the impact the Roberts Court’s patent rulings in appeals from the CAFC (six cases, six reversals) has had on the CAFC. The article, titled “The Error of Their Ways,” shows the extent to which the USSC is pushing the CAFC in the direction of a more moderate (less permissive) application of patent law. According to this article, the Supreme Court has the CAFC questioning everything they have ever known about patent law. If this article is to be believed, the Supreme Court has effected a major retrenchment in U.S. patent law.

Oh well. Who said that the law was immune from creative destruction?

You may be able to find the American Lawyer in a library, but I doubt that many libraries would pay that subscription ….