Scott McBride Image

Scott McBride

Shareholder

McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd

Scott McBride is a Shareholder at McAndrews. His practice focuses primarily on the litigation and trial of patent and complex technology cases in federal courts and before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and reexamination proceedings before the Patent Office. Scott has a proven ability to help clients procure or acquire valuable intellectual property to protect their business, reach advantageous arrangements for solving intellectual property disputes where appropriate, and aggressively litigate patents when necessary.

 

 

Recent Articles by Scott McBride

Arthrex Aftermath: How the Landmark Supreme Court Decision Drives the PTAB’s Future

A working definition of inertia is the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. As it did in Oil States (S.C. 2018), inertia appears to have played a role in the Supreme Court’s decision in the United States v. Arthrex, in which the central dispute was the remedy to address the unconstitutional appointment of administrative patent judges (APJs). Possible remedies included vacating hundreds or thousands of prior final decisions by unconstitutionally appointed APJs, requiring all APJs to be confirmed by the Senate and then rehear previously-decided reviews, finding the entire statutory structure unconstitutional and handing invalidity/unpatentability determinations back to Article III Courts, removing employment protections for APJs (as the Federal Circuit did), or adding a layer of review so that inferior officers had appropriate responsibility under the Appointments Clause. Faced with these possibilities, the Supreme Court’s holding maintains the inertia of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and again solidifies its role in patent litigation today.