Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:
- an article how an inventor “is asking the Supreme Court to take up his case, not to overturn Alice, but to clarify how courts should apply it”;
- an article noting how “Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was among a group of nearly 50 economists” telling the Federal Circuit “that President Donald Trump improperly used a ‘balance-of-payments’ provision to justify a round of global tariffs earlier this year”;
- an article reporting the Merit Systems Protection Board “has finalized rules ending standards it has used since the early 1980s to weigh the appropriateness of a penalty—often firing—in appeals by federal employees of disciplinary actions for alleged misconduct”; and
- an article describing how “[c]ourts are testing the boundaries of” Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo “on federal regulatory authority,” saying it “left open a path for judges to defer to executive branch agencies in certain circumstances.”
Grace Kaste wrote a piece for GeekWire highlighting how an inventor “is asking the Supreme Court to take up his case, not to overturn Alice, but to clarify how courts should apply it.” Kaste quotes the inventor as saying that the “patent legal system has become hostile to inventors.” According to the Kaste, the inventor filed his petition because, he says, “[t]here’s a broad coalition of people who would like some sanity brought back to patent law, from small inventors and startups to former judges.” For more information, check out the case page in US Patent No. 7,679,637 LLC v. Google LLC.
Isabel Gottlieb authored an article for Law360 noting how “Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was among a group of nearly 50 economists” telling the Federal Circuit “that President Donald Trump improperly used a ‘balance-of-payments’ provision to justify a round of global tariffs earlier this year.” Gottlieb explained how the amicus brief was filed at the Federal Circuit in its review of a decision by the Court of International Trade, which “found the . . . tariffs unlawful in May.”
An article published on FEDWeek reporting the Merit Systems Protection Board “has finalized rules ending standards it has used since the early 1980s to weigh the appropriateness of a penalty—often firing—in appeals by federal employees of disciplinary actions for alleged misconduct.” According to the article, going forward the MSPB “will evaluate whether the agency’s chosen penalty is within the tolerable limits of reasonableness in light of the totality of the circumstances, determined on a case-by-case basis, with no particular set of enumerated factors required to be addressed in every case.”
Robert Iafolla filed an article with Bloomberg Law describing how “[c]ourts are testing the boundaries of” Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo “on federal regulatory authority,” saying it “left open a path for judges to defer to executive branch agencies in certain circumstances.” According to Iafolla, the Federal Circuit “laid out a marker late last year.” Moreover, Iafolla says, “a challenge to a Treasury Department tax regulation would offer the Federal Circuit another chance to elaborate on how broad a grant of rulemaking power qualifies as a Loper Bright delegation.”