FedCircuitBlog

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article noting how, “out of the nation’s 13 federal appeals courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is a remarkable outlier, having sent just one of its former clerks on to the chambers of a Supreme Court justice”;
• an article discussing discussing how this week the Supreme Court “considered whether federal district courts have the authority to hear certain constitutional challenges to laws affecting veterans’ benefits and, if they do, what types of constitutional challenges fall into this category”; and
• an article reporting how, after “Judge Clevenger, 89, retired Friday after 36 years on the bench,” “[h]is former clerks and fellow judges all zeroed in on his intelligence, level of preparation for each case and discerning eye, which they say will be missed at the court.”

An Eleventh Circuit order issued today granted Judge Newman’s request to make prior orders in her judicial misconduct case public. Notably, today’s order states that on August 19, 2026, Chief Judge Roberts transferred her case from the Federal Circuit to the Eleventh Circuit. Among the many interesting aspects of this decision by Chief Judge Roberts, it comes on the heals of the Supreme Court’s decision on June 15, 2026, to deny review of a D.C. Circuit judgment rejecting Judge Newman’s challenge to the Federal Circuit’s handling of her case. For more information on today’s development, here are reports by several news agencies. We will report more later this week as more information becomes available.

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article how the Federal Circuit recently “denied [a] bid for a full court review of a panel decision that reinstated a $177 million jury verdict” for patent infringement, “while one dissenting judge said the panel’s holding ‘creates confusion’ over enablement standards for patent method claims”;
• a blog post reporting how Crocs has asked the Supreme Court to decide “whether an agency disposition is final as to some issues, thus triggering deadlines for judicial review, while other issues decided in the same disposition remain subject to further executive or administrative review”;
• an article discussing how the Federal Circuit recently “issued a precedential decision affirming a finding of invalidity of certain claims [a] wireless communications patent, but holding that the district court’s reasoning, which focused on indefiniteness, was erroneous”; and
• an article highlighting how a “Wisconsin congressman unveiled a bill Wednesday aimed at modernizing the law governing misconduct investigations for federal judges and limit indefinite suspensions of jurists which judicial advocates say amount to ‘stealth impeachments.’”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article discussing how the Federal Circuit recently issued an opinion “affirming a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that granted Google LLC and YouTube LLC judgment on the pleadings on patent ineligibility grounds”;
• an article reporting how the Federal Circuit recently held that the “Patent Trial and Appeal Board was right to fully invalidate a speech recognition patent that Apple stands accused of infringing”;
• an article noting how the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal because “the 30-day deadline of 28 U.S.C. § 2107(a) for filing a notice of appeal is ‘mandatory and jurisdictional’ with no equitable exceptions”; and
• an article highlighting how the Federal Circuit recently “reversed the Merit Systems Protection Board’s dismissal” of a Presidential Innovation Fellow’s “whistleblower appeal . . . , finding he had made sufficient allegations of gross mismanagement to establish jurisdiction.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article explaining how the Federal Circuit held that claims in three patents covering profitability-calculation methods are ineligible;
• an article reporting how USPTO Director John Squires asked the Federal Circuit to remand tech companies’ appeal of a $253 million patent judgment back to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board; and
• an article highlighting how Senators Ashley Moody and Chris Coons introduced a bill, the Better Bench Act, that would let judges on the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims live anywhere in the United States instead of within 50 miles of Washington, D.C.

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.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• a report highlighting that the Federal Circuit “is writing more opinions . . . several years after it faced criticism from a group of patent lawyers and academics”;
• an article noting how the Federal Circuit “handed SpaceTime3D, Inc. mixed results in two nonprecedential decisions involving graphical user interface patents challenged by Apple and Google”; and
• a piece explaining how “two dozen states pushed the Federal Circuit . . . to revive their specific claims against now-expired temporary tariffs while simultaneously pushing the panel to otherwise back the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling that the tariffs were illegal.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article suggesting “Texas’ reputation as the nation’s top venue for patent disputes hasn’t faded”;
• an article arguing a recent Federal Circuit ruling related to patent marking “will complicate licensing talks” between patent owners and prospective licensees and “and give defendants a route to limit or escape damages in some cases”;
• a press release reporting how, “[o]n the eve of the 250th anniversary of Independence Day, in the nation’s capital, the Federal Circuit Center for Innovation and Law invited the public to the Justice Up Close, History All Around civics program”; and
• an article “ranking the Circuit Courts by importance.”

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.

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article suggesting that “[t]wo decisions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit within the past couple of months have brought” the difference between patent and trademark preemptive infringement remedies “into sharper focus”;
• a blog post discussing how “[p]atent filings are now mined not only by competitors, but by governments, intelligence agencies, sovereign investors, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems capable of analyzing millions of documents simultaneously”;
• an article highlighting how “[t]wo important patent prosecution data points that are in tension: [t]he vast majority of patent applications are initially rejected by the patent examiner; and [t]he vast majority of patent applications eventually issue as a patent”; and
• an article arguing that, “over the past several months, the Trump administration has eroded” the Merit System Protection Board’s “authority in a series of steps that some former officials say have left the board a shell of the institution it once was.”