Building Judicial Capital in Patent Adjudication

The time has come to reform the way district courts handle patent cases. For many years, academics have studied and provided comment regarding the high reversal rates in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit of district court patent decisions. In particular, district court claim constructions have an exceedingly high reversal rate. Recent studies have estimated that about one-third of all district court claim constructions appealed to the Federal Circuit are reversed.¹ To further complicate the problem, the process for enforcing patent rights has become both time-consuming and expensive.

In response, district courts have been trying to improve both the quality and timeliness of patent decisions. Accurate adjudication of patent issues would ensure a more predictable patent enforcement system, giving parties greater confidence that their disputes will be fairly resolved in litigation. Efficient resolution of patent cases will encourage parties to resolve disputes on their merits, rather than on the basis of their assigned judge or court or budgets. Recently, there has been growing recognition that patent specialization at the trial-court level may help improve the quality and timeliness of patent litigation. Giving specialist judges the opportunity to hear more patent cases will give them greater expertise in handling patent issues, and allow them to build judicial human capital in patent adjudication. In turn, this will help improve the accuracy of patent decisions and promote the efficient management of patent cases. And importantly, improvements in procedural efficiency will also help decrease the time to judgment for cases, and will reduce the overall costs of patent litigation.