Procedural Matters
S.Ct. told Fed. Cir treats patent owners unfairly (posted 11/15/19)
In Chestnut Hill Sound Inc., v. Apple Inc. Chestnut Hill has invoked Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution in its petition to the Supreme Court for writ of certiorari to block one-line summary affirmances altogether or at least mandate parity for patent owner and petitioner appellants. The petition argues:
“[t]he Federal Circuit is writing reasoned opinions for losing Petitioner-Appellants at a significantly higher rate than it writes reasoned opinions for losing Patent Owner-Appllants. Specifically, a losing Patent Owner Appellant is more than three times as likely to receive a Rule 36 summary affirmation than a losing Petitioner-Appellant. This is . . . to the detriment of the Patent Owner-Appellants, and it simply seems unfair.”
Update (11/19/19): In a related matter, Straight Path IP Group LLC v. Apple Inc. et al., the Supreme Court denied 1) SPIP Litigation Group's petition to find that its Due Process rights were infringed by the Federal Circuit's tendancy to issue single-line orders under Rule 36. In this case, the Fed. Cir. summarily affirmed Judge Alsup's 2017 decision that Apple and Cisco did not infringe SPIP's patents.