Here's the thing, though: the courts don't make the law, nor do they
implement the law. If Congress has written the law acceptably, and the agency is
following that law, the courts are not supposed to go overruling the agency. The
courts haven't found the patent laws Congress wrote to be unConstitutional, they
haven't found the USPTO to have failed to follow those laws in determining that
the patent is invalid and they haven't found that the USPTO lacks the legal
authority to rule on patent validity, so by exactly what authority do the courts
get to tell the USPTO that it can't find those patents to be invalid?
The
problem is that the courts don't want to accept what Congress has written into
law: that the initial grant of a patent is not the last word on it's validity.
The courts can't find a way to say "Congress can't write that into law.", but
they keep trying to ignore it anyway. Which leads to situations where the courts
make a ruling they have no authority to make before the agency which does have
the authority has had it's final say in the matter. If the courts have a problem
with the results, let them stay the matter until the USPTO has finished
following the process Congress wrote into law.
That's not to say the
courts can't make a ruling. They can find that the USPTO failed to follow the
law when it declared a patent valid, and invalidate the patent. They can rule
that one or more of the USPTO's findings in denying a patent failed to comply
with patent law, but that would only be appropriate when the patent applicant
was making a claim against the USPTO itself rather than against an alleged
infringer. The infringer simply isn't the proper party to answer a claim that
the USPTO failed to comply with the requirements of the law. And without a claim
that the USPTO failed to follow the law... well, Congress delegated
implementation of patent law to the USPTO, not the courts. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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