Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2018
Journal Title
Akron Law Review
ISSN
0002-371X
Abstract
The progression toward reevaluating patent validity in the administrative, rather than judicial, setting became overtly substitutionary in the America Invents Act. No longer content to encourage court litigants to rely on Patent Office expertise for faster, cheaper, and more accurate validity decisions, Congress in the AIA took steps to force a choice. The result is an emergent border between court and agency power in the U.S. patent system. By design, the border is not absolute. Concurrent activity in both settings over the same dispute remains possible. What is troubling is the systematic weakening of this border by Patent Office encroachments on powers Congress left to the courts. This Article traces the statutory roots of those encroachments, their initial encouragement by the Supreme Court’s 2016 Cuozzo decision, and the recent resistance to their further expansion by the en banc Federal Circuit’s 2018 Wi-Fi One decision.
First Page
1069
Last Page
1092
Num Pages
24
Volume Number
51
Issue Number
4
Publisher
University of Akron School of Law
Recommended Citation
Saurabh Vishnubhakat,
The Porous Court-Agency Border in Patent Law,
51
Akron L. Rev.
1069
(2018).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1266