Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:
- a piece arguing the Federal Circuit’s 2026 docket reveals a “recurring concern” with threshold questions of “standing, jurisdiction, reviewability, finality and adjudicative authority” that cut across substantive fields;
- an article reporting on a new petition for writ of certiorari arguing the Federal Circuit has effectively collapsed the Supreme Court’s two-step eligibility framework into “a single inquiry”; and
- a commentary explaining how a recent Federal Circuit decision sharpened the “skilled searcher” standard for determining what prior art grounds a petitioner “reasonably could have raised” under the statutory inter partes review estoppel provision.
Philip Eklem and Amit Dhillon Sandhu authored a piece for Law360 arguing the Federal Circuit’s 2026 docket reveals a “recurring concern” with threshold questions of “standing, jurisdiction, reviewability, finality and adjudicative authority” that cut across substantive fields. According to the authors, the practical lesson is that “the threshold issue is the case,” because, as they put it, “[t]he merits do not matter if the court never gets there.”
Steve Brachmann reported for IPWatchdog on a new petition for writ of certiorari arguing the Federal Circuit has effectively collapsed the Supreme Court’s two-step eligibility framework into “a single inquiry.” Brachmann also notes the petition argues the Federal Circuit “is divided against itself” on eligibility. For more on the petition, check out our case page for US Patent No. 7,679,637 LLC v. Google LLC.
Jonathan Bowser authored commentary for Reuters explaining how a recent Federal Circuit decision sharpened the “skilled searcher” standard for determining what prior art grounds a petitioner “reasonably could have raised” under the statutory inter partes review estoppel provision. Bowser explains how the court rejected estoppel based on a search returning 26,333 references, because “something more is required for estoppel when a classification search alone returns an unreviewable number of search results.” He also notes how the court separately found a second reference’s discovery was tainted by “clear evidence of hindsight bias” that was “likely irrelevant to the skilled searcher inquiry.” For more information, check out the recent opinion in Ironburg Inventions Ltd. v. Valve Corp.