FedCircuitBlog

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:

• an article discussing how recently “the Federal Circuit denied a petition for mandamus relief from an order transferring a first-filed declaratory judgment action”;
• another article explaining how “AstraZeneca has urged the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to revisit a split panel decision”;
• another article detailing how a “Federal Circuit judge said Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court justices created ‘a trap for the unwary’ by keeping alive a doctrine barring inventors from challenging the validity of their own patents”; and
• yet another article assessing how the Federal Circuit recently “address[ed] [the] ‘abuse of authority’ standard under [federal] whistleblower law.”

This morning the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in a whistleblower retaliation case appealed from the Merit Systems Protection Board. The court also issued three nonprecedential opinions. The first comes in a veterans case appealed from the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. The second comes in an employment case appealed from the Merit Systems Protection Board. And the third comes in a patent case appealed from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Notably, Judge Stoll dissented-in-part from the holding in the patent case. The court also issued a nonprecedential order granting a petition for a writ of mandamus, ordering the Eastern District of Texas to require transfer of a patent case. Finally, the court issued two Rule 36 judgments. Here are the introductions to the opinions and order and links to the Rule 36 judgments.