Posts Tagged: "New York Intellectual Property Law Association"

Arthrex Update: With Responses Due Next Week, Amici Urge Federal Circuit to Grant Rehearing

In December, petitions for rehearing were filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by each party involved in Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., including the United States government as intervenor in the case. The panel decision in that case, rendered on October 31 of last year, severed a tenure provision protecting administrative patent judges (APJs) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). This severance was determined by the Federal Circuit to overcome a constitutional challenge brought by Arthrex that APJs were principal officers of the United States, and thus their appointments by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, rather than the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate, didn’t pass muster under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. In their petitions for rehearing, Arthrex argued that the removal of the tenure provision was an insufficient solution, Smith & Nephew contended that the fix was incorrect because APJs were already inferior officers, and the U.S. government urged rehearing so that several legal errors made by the original Federal Circuit panel could be corrected. On January 3, Federal Circuit Clerk Peter Marksteiner informed  the parties in Arthrex that they could file a single response to the petitions for rehearing. Those petitions are due by January 17 and the parties have been informed that no extensions of time for submitting responses will be granted. By the end of December, the Federal Circuit had received a pair of amicus briefs in the case, one from the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) and the other from the New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA).

Only ‘Expenses’ Not ‘Attorney Fees’ Should Be Awarded Under Section 21(b) of the Lanham Act

Section 1071(b)(3) does not expressly or implicitly permit the award of “attorney fees” to the PTO. Specifically, Section 1071(b)(3) states simply that all the expenses of the proceeding shall be paid by the party bringing the case, whether the final decision is in favor of such party or not. By its express terms, the statute merely allows for the award of “expenses,” and not “attorney fees.”