Boston University School of Law Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law Faculty Scholarship 6-2012 Rethinking Federal Circuit Jurisdiction Paul Gugliuzza Boston University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Courts Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Paul Gugliuzza, Rethinking Federal Circuit Jurisdiction, 100 Georgetown Law Journal 1437 (2012). Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/168 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLES Rethinking Federal Circuit Jurisdiction PAUL R. GUGLIUZZA* Thirty years ago, Congress created the Federal Circuit for the overriding purpose of bringing uniformity to patent law. Yet less than half of the court’s cases are patent cases. Most Federal Circuit cases involve veterans benefits, government-employment actions, government contracts, and other matters. Al- though existing literature purports to study the Federal Circuit as an institution, these projects focus largely on the court’s patent cases. This Article, by contrast, considers whether the court’s nonpatent docket might affect the development of patent law and whether the court’s specialization in patent law has conse- quences for how it decides nonpatent cases. These inquiries result in two primary contributions. First, drawing on institu- tional-choice theory, this Article suggests that certain litigants—particularly military veterans but also government employees and government contractors— should not be forced to litigate appeals in a specialized court in Washington, D.C. Second, the Article offers a structural remedy that might help cure a frequently discussed problem with Federal Circuit patent law: that it is not sufficiently sensitive to innovation policy. By replacing some of the court’s current nonpatent docket with a variety of commercial disputes (over which the Federal Circuit would not have exclusive jurisdiction), the court might better understand the role that patents play in stimulating (or impeding) innovation in different industries. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................... 1439 I. SPECIALIZED ADJUDICATION ............................. 1445 A. SPECIALIZED COURTS: THE THEORETICAL DEBATE ............ 1446 B. SPECIALIZED APPELLATE COURTS IN THE FEDERAL SYSTEM ...... 1451 * Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law. © 2012, Paul R. Gugliuzza. For comments and helpful discussions, I thank Martin Adelman, Greg Castanias, John Duffy, Lee Epstein, Alyson Flournoy, John Golden, Will Hubbard, Sapna Kumar, Mark Lemley, Charlene Luke, Jason Nance, Rachel Rebouche´, Elizabeth Rowe, Sharon Rush, Steven Schooner, David Schwartz, Danny Sokol, Jerry Stouck, and the editors of The Georgetown Law Journal. Thanks also to participants at the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, the Junior Faculty Federal Courts Work- shop, the Florida Legal Scholarship Forum, and a works-in-progress workshop at the University of Florida. 1437 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1945039 1438THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 100:1437 II. THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT:PURPOSE AND JURISDICTION ............. 1453 A.“THE COURT AMERICAN BUSINESS WANTED AND GOT: THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT” ....... 1454 B.“NOT A ‘SPECIALIZED COURT’”........................ 1458 C. THE “OTHER” FEDERAL CIRCUIT ....................... 1461 III. PROBLEMS WITH THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S JURISDICTION .......... 1464 A. LACK OF “GENERALIZING” INFLUENCE FROM THE NONPATENT DOCKET ....................................... 1465 1. Narrowness of the Federal Circuit’s Nonpatent Jurisdiction ................................. 1465 2. Possibilities for Generalizing Influence Under the Current Structure ............................. 1468 B. A PARADOX: IS THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S JURISDICTION ALSO TOO BROAD? ....................................... 1475 C. EVALUATING THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S NONPATENT JURISDICTION . 1476 1. Suspect Rationales for Centralization: Veterans and Personnel Appeals ............................ 1477 a. Veterans Appeals .......................... 1478 b. Personnel Appeals, Briefly ................... 1484 c. Concluding Thoughts on Veterans and Personnel Appeals: The Federal Circuit’s Self-Image ....... 1485 2. Favoritism and Formalism: Government-Contracts Appeals .................................... 1487 3. A Diversity of Expertise? ....................... 1492 a. Noncontract Appeals from the Court of Federal Claims ................................. 1492 b. Appeals from the Court of International Trade .... 1492 c. Trademark Appeals ........................ 1493 IV. TRANSFORMING THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT ...................... 1494 A. NEW JURISDICTIONAL POSSIBILITIES ..................... 1495 B. IMPLEMENTING A NEW JURISDICTIONAL MODEL ............. 1500 C. OBJECTIONS AND RESPONSES .......................... 1502 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1945039 2012]RETHINKING FEDERAL CIRCUIT JURISDICTION 1439 CONCLUSION ............................................ 1505 INTRODUCTION The Federal Circuit is increasingly in the headlines for its cutting-edge decisions on patent law. Patents on human genes, methods of doing business, and blockbuster pharmaceuticals have pushed the decisions of this relatively specialized federal court to the fore of public consciousness.1 But few stories mention that patent cases comprise less than half of the Federal Circuit’s caseload. Almost sixty percent of the court’s cases involve matters such as veterans benefits, government-employment disputes, and government con- tracts.2 Patent law scholars have also largely overlooked this significant compo- nent of the Federal Circuit’s work.3 Despite recent efforts to examine the Federal Circuit as an institution, commentators have not considered how these nonpatent cases affect Federal Circuit patent law or, conversely, how the centralization of patent appeals has affected nonpatent litigants in the Federal Circuit.4 This Article explores these issues and provides a transsubstantive analysis of Federal Circuit jurisdiction. Yet it is situated within intellectual property litera- ture tying critiques of Federal Circuit patent law to the court’s jurisdictional structure. One important criticism of the Federal Circuit is that judicially crafted patent law is not sufficiently responsive to the philosophy of the Patent Act, to national competition policy, and to the needs of researchers and technology 1. See, e.g., Bristol, Sanofi Win Plavix Ruling, L.A. TIMES, Dec. 9, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/ 2006/dec/09/business/fi-plavix9; Charles Lane, A Powerful Voice in Patent Disputes,WASH.POST, Nov. 6, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/05/AR2006110501171.html; Andrew Pollack, Despite Gene Patent Victory, Myriad Genetics Faces Challenges, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 24, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/business/despite-gene-patent-victory-myriad-genetics-faces- challenges.html; Andrew Pollack, Ruling Upholds Gene Patent in Cancer Test, N.Y. TIMES, July 29, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/business/gene-patent-in-cancer-test-upheld-by-appeals- panel.html; John Russell, Lilly Gets Win with Ruling on Evista,INDIANAPOLIS STAR, Sept. 2, 2010, http://www.indystar.com/article/20100902/BUSINESS03/9020422/Lilly-gets-win-ruling-Evista; John Schwartz, Justices Take Broad View of Business Method Patents, N.Y. TIMES, June 28, 2010, http:// www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/business/29patent.html; see also Sanofi-Aventis v. Apotex Inc., 659 F.3d 1171 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (Plavix); Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 653 F.3d 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (gene patents), vacated sub nom. Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1794 (2012); Eli Lilly & Co. v. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc., 619 F.3d 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (Evista); In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc) (business-method patents), aff’d sub nom. Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010); Sanofi-Synthelabo v. Apotex, Inc., 550 F.3d 1075 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (Plavix); Sanofi-Synthelabo v. Apotex, Inc., 470 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (same). 2. See infra notes 20, 133 and accompanying text. 3. But cf. David L. Schwartz & Lee Petherbridge, Legal Scholarship and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: An Empirical Study of a National Circuit,26BERKELEY TECH. L.J. (forthcoming 2012) (manuscript at 32 n.71, 39), available at http://ssrn.com/abstractϭ1725543 (noting that the Federal Circuit cites legal scholarship more frequently in patent cases than other types of cases, raising questions about whether this disparity is normatively desirable). 4. See, e.g., Symposium, The Federal Circuit as an Institution,43LOY. L.A. L. REV. 749 (2010) (featuring twelve articles, all focusing on patent law). 1440THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 100:1437 users.5 Critiquing the judicial methodology that has led patent law to this point, John Thomas has chronicled the Federal Circuit’s penchant for “adjudicative rule formalism,” favoring bright-line rules over malleable standards that would allow lower courts to tailor patent law to the diverse industries that interact