There is no Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial on the issue of attorney fee awards in patent cases. Not even when $12 million is at stake.

So ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday in a notorious pair of cases involving the rights to a scientific breakthrough on Alzheimer's disease research.

The Alzheimer's Institute of America, also known as AIA, argued that the jury that heard its patent validity case should also have decided whether it acted in bad faith. Instead, U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage of Philadelphia made that finding and socked AIA with a $3.9 million fee award. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte in the Northern District of California followed with a $7.8 million award predicated on Savage's findings.