The Silent Circuit: The Growing Backlash against Rule 36 No Opinion Judgments from the Federal Circuit
Patent – Patently-O 2024-12-11
Summary:
By Dennis Crouch
Four new amicus briefs were filed last week in ParkerVision v. TCL, bringing the total to eight and adding substantial firepower to the challenge against the Federal Circuit’s practice of issuing summary affirmances without opinion. I wanted to quickly run through the briefs and talk through their various perspectives on why the court’s Rule 36 practice warrants Supreme Court review.
You can read in the links below that I have written several times about this pending case and more generally about the no-opinion judgment problem. The basic background is that the Federal Circuit has an ongoing and extensive practice of issuing no-opinion judgments in a substantial percentage of its cases. ParkerVision argues, inter alia, that this practice violates 35 U.S.C. § 144’s explicit requirement that the Federal Circuit “shall issue . . . its mandate and opinion” when deciding Patent Office appeals.
The ParkerVision docket, along with companion case Island IP, has been distributed internally within the Supreme Court and scheduled to be discussed at the court’s January 10, 2025 conference.
Documents Filed with the Court:
- November 4, 2024: Petition for Writ of Certiorari by ParkerVision, Inc.