Posts Tagged: "Eleventh Amendment"

The bill has nothing to do with drugs or drug prices, how how much Missourians desire cheaper generics. The PACED Act is discriminatory, has nothing to do with lowering drug prices, and doesn’t change the fact that to date no Indian Tribe has ever asserted sovereign immunity in a patent dispute in federal court… Ironically, if the PTAB and PTAB process were seen as fair and even-handed, there would be no incentive for any company to transfer its patents to sovereign tribes or State universities in order to escape the clutches of PTAB jurisdiction. Simply stated, the problem is IPRs, not Native American Tribes or sovereign immunity.

The overlap between sovereign immunity and IP issues is not something that comes up all of the time. However, when it does, the impact of the immunity can be significant. The law for certain matters, such as lawsuits in Federal court, is fairly well resolved. However, its application when new procedures are made available, such as for IPRs which were established in 2012, has provided new challenges and opportunities… So can the Federal or State government be sued for infringement under Federal patent, trademark, or copyright law? The answer often depends on the particular facts and specific legal issues of a dispute. That said, in most cases the answer is Yes for the U.S. Government and No for states and Tribal Nations, unless they have taken a specific action to waive immunity for that matter. A brief summary follows.

Notice what APJ Harlow wrote relating to IPR2017-01068 is word for word identical to what APJ Bisk wrote relating to IPR2017-01186. Indeed, the entirety of the concurring opinions are word for word identical. Obviously, the concurring opinions were shared internally in some form or fashion prior to being issued by the PTAB. But why? It seems perfectly reasonable for the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to want to know who actually wrote these two concurring opinions. Did APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk cooperate and jointly write a single concurring opinion filed in two separate cases? Why would two APJs not assigned to the same case take it upon themselves to collaborate in writing a single concurring opinion? Are APJs not assigned to a case typically consulted? Did someone else write those opinions for APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk to make sure this particular viewpoint was incorporated into the decisions? How did APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk have access to the concurring opinions each would file?

As we mark the close of yet another year, we’re provided with a perfect opportunity to look back on the previous twelve months and see what has transpired. No one could call it a good year for patent owners (except those with the largest pockets, of course) starting with the United States’ 10th-place ranking among national patent systems in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s IP Index, and it didn’t appear as though any weaknesses in uncertain patentability across the U.S. technological landscape were addressed in a positive manner this year. It’s inevitable that the ball will drop on New Year’s Eve and calendars everywhere will turn from 2017 to 2018. Whether the U.S. federal government will be able to stop the death knell sounding doom for our nation’s patent system, however, is still anyone’s guess and it seems far from likely.

It is that time once again when we look back on the previous year in preparation to close the final chapter of 2017 in order move fresh into the year ahead. 2017 was a busy year in the patent world, although change was not as cataclysmic as it had been in past years, such as 2012 when the PTAB and post grant challenges began, in 2013 when AIA first to file rules went into effect, or in 2014 when the Supreme Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank. It was, nevertheless, still an interesting year… To come up with the list below I’ve reviewed all of our patent articles, and have come up with these top 10 patent stories for 2017. They appear in chronological order as they happened throughout the year.

Each of the Covidien IPRs challenged the validity of a single patent owned by the University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) which the university had previously asserted against Covidien. The decisions made by the ALJs in these IPRs indicate that public research universities can find protection from review proceedings at PTAB by claiming rights afforded them by the Eleventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution… In their final written decision, the PTAB ALJs note that deciding this case based on UFRF’s Eleventh Amendment defense could have wide-reaching implications for the future of validity challenges to patents held by public university research arms or “a monetization foundation affiliated with a state university.”