37 C.F.R. § 1.75(e), Jepson claims, and the Administrative Procedure Act
Patent – Patently-O 2017-09-05
By David Boundy
The following is a guest post by David Boundy – a Cambridge Massachusetts attorney with a specialty at the intersection of patent and administrative law. In 2007-09, David led the teams that quashed the Continuations, 5/25 Claims, IDS, Markush, and appeal rules under the Paperwork Reduction Act.
This is a follow-up to Dennis’s two posts on Jepson claims, of Sept 1, 2017 and Aug. 30, 2017.
37 C.F.R. § 1.75(e), recommending that applicants “should” use Jepson form, is a classic case of a “general statement of policy” under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(A). It’s only hortatory, with no force of law. The PTO did exactly the right thing, stating that its preference is non-binding, by using the word “should.” Patent attorneys do exactly the right thing in recognizing the multiple substantive perils of Jepson claims, and ignoring § 1.75(e).
The point that controls everything else is that the PTO has no relevant substantive rule making authority, and therefore has no power to dictate any matter of claim form that might have substantive consequences. The PTO is permitted to announce any preference it likes on issues of claim drafting, and can even alert the public that life is easier for the PTO if applicants follow this preference for Jepson form. But the PTO has no authority to require any claim drafting technique that has substantive impact.
Because this is an issue where the PTO has no rule making authority, § 1.75(e) could not be promulgated as a “must” binding regulation. To bind the public with force of law, an agency must have authority for the particular rule, and follow Congress’ procedures for promulgating it (35 U.S.C. § 2(b)(2)(B), the Administrative Procedure Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, Regulatory Flexibility Act, Executive Order 12,866, and all the rest). So even though the PTO jumped all the procedural hoops and ended up with something that looks facially like a “regulation” in CFR (rather than in guidance), without authority, that regulation has no force of law (and would not, even if § 1.75(e) had used the word “must”).
The Administrative Procedure Act, § 553(b)(A), creates a pigeonhole for this kind of expression of agency preference, called a “general statement of policy.” (I wrote about “policy statements” earlier this summer.) “General statements of policy” are often used by an agency to offer helpful suggestions (at least suggestions that the agency thinks might be helpful to it). But conversely, “policy statements” are purely hortatory, with no binding effect against the public. That’s exactly what the PTO did here, using the word “should” in § 1.75(e) to indicate a non-binding preference, rather than “must” to indicate a requirement.
“Policy statements” are also used to unilaterally promise a quid pro quo or set a floor (“If you the public do x, we the agency promise favorable outcome y. If you don’t do x, you can still convince us to do y if you convince us under the controlling law.”) Such quid pro quo policy statements bind the agency to give favorable action y for any member of the public that relies on x, but impose no binding requirement on the public to do x. Here, the PTO made no promise of any favorable result that would occur if an applicant uses Jepson form, so § 1.75(e) signifies nothing—and does it without sound and fury.
When the PTO has preferences of this sort, there is no requirement to put them in CFR regulations—§ 553(b)(A) expressly exempts “statements of policy” from any requirement to be stated in regulation. (They still have to be published, § 552(a)(1)(B), but need not be baked into CFR and notice-and-comment.) The PTO’s preference for Jepson claims could just as well have been in a guidance document like the MPEP. There’s no error or harm in putting a “should” policy statement in a regulation rather than guidance, but no requirement either.
The only ethical principle for patent attorneys that I see, in absence of force of law, is to avoid doing dumb stuff that hurts the client. Patent attorneys have ethical obligations to their clients to avoid all the substantive pitfalls of Jepson claims. I see no “ethical guideline” that would pull in the direction of § 1.75(e)—though of course I’d love to learn something new, and I look forward to the comments.
Two meanders on a rainy Labor Day weekend that were prompted by looking at § 1.75(e)—
First—
37 C.F.R. § 1.75(d)(1) says “ terms and phrases used in the claims must find clear support or antecedent basis in the description.” There are multiple drafting errors here, and the PTO should correct them.
(a) There is no requirement whatsoever for “antecedent basis” agreement between the spec and claims. Sure, § 1.75(d)(1) blurs the “must” requirement by adding an alternative, “clear support or antecedent basis,” but the Paperwork Reduction Act requires that regulations be “written using plain, coherent, and unambiguous terminology.” Agencies are not permitted to waste the public’s time by tossing red herrings and irrelevancies into their regulations and leaving it to the public to decipher the agency’s sleight of hand (or spend hours over the years pointing examiners to the word “or” that so many overlook).
(b) § 112(b) permits “written description” and enablement support to be drawn from the drawings as well as the specification. A rule that says it “must” be in the “description” is at the best unclear, and at worst over-prescriptive.
I get it, it’s easier for the PTO to examine an application when the claims and specification use the same terms. But the PTO has no authority to put that preference in a “must” regulation.
Second—
The “single sentence rule” of MPEP § 608.01(m), affirmed by the D.C. District Court in Fressola v. Manbeck, 36 USPQ2d 1211 (D.D.C. 1995), stands on flimsy ground, though I’m not sure which way a better-argued case under today’s law would come out.
The D.C. District Court noted that claims can be drafted in single sentences or multiple, as only a matter of form, with no substantive effect, and the rule is thus “procedural” and not subject to requirements for notice and comment. Even assuming that the Court’s characterization as “procedural” is correct, it doesn’t answer the question—the APA’s §§ 552 and 553 set procedural requirements for any rule that an agency wants to promulgate with binding effect, even procedural rules, and the MPEP doesn’t qualify and never did (an administrative law point that Fressola didn’t argue). Today’s 35 U.S.C. § 2(b)(2) is even clearer, requiring § 553 “regulations” for procedural rules, and forbidding the PTO’s practice of promulgating procedural requirements in guidance. Further, the language of today’s § 2(b)(2)(B) (especially when contrasted to pre-1999 § 6) is similar to the language in other statutes for other agencies, and the agencies accept that the language means they “must” use notice and comment. See, e.g., Department of State, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 64 Fed. Reg. 53632 (Oct 4, 1999) (“Pursuant to [9 U.S.C. § 553], the rulemaking procedures of [5 U.S.C. § 553] apply to any determination to effectuate such a modification or amendment [of the Department’s procedural rules for international arbitration]. In accordance with those procedures, notice must be published in the Federal Register, time for comment provided, and the final rule published for 30 days before the rule may become effective.”).
The Fressola court stated (citing Chevron) “the Plaintiff must nonetheless overcome a quite deferential standard of review in order to justify the invalidation of a portion of the MPEP by a reviewing court.” Nonsense. That kind of deference only applies to interpretations (not rules cut out of whole cloth, like the single sentence rule), issued in a reasonably formal form published to the regulated public (not squirreled away in guidance directed to agency employees). Subsequent developments in the Chevron administrative law space (specifically Mead and Christensen) make even clearer that informal guidance is not entitled to high deference. An agency only gets that kind of deference after it earns it by jumping several hoops of formality for its interpretation.
The reasoning of Fressola is a terribly confused mish-mash of incompatible legal principles (see my upcoming article in ABA Landslide, later this fall, which provides a helpful taxonomy of rules). The single sentence rule and Fressola have been entirely undercut by developments since 1995. (The continuing vitality of Ex parte Quayle practice also comes to mind.)
But at the end of the day, the “single sentence” rule could squeak through a challenge, under the administrative law standing principles of “suffering legal wrong” and “harmless error”—even Fressola admitted that his single-sentence claims suffered no substantive disadvantage relative to his multi-sentence claims.