Is the Federal Circuit Succeeding?
Author InfoPolk Wagner (University of Pennsylvania) Lee Petherbridge (Independent) Abstract As an appellate body jurisdictionally demarcated by subject matter rather than geography, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit occupies a unique role in the federal judiciary. This controversial institutional design has had profound effects on the jurisprudential development of the legal regimes within its purview – especially the patent law, which the Federal Circuit has come to thoroughly dominate in its two decades of existence. In this Article, we assess the court’s performance against its basic premise: that, as compared to prior regional circuit involvement, centralization of legal authority will yield a clearer, more coherent, and more predictable legal infrastructure for the patent law. Using empirical data obtained from a novel study of the Federal Circuit’s jurisprudence of claim construction – the interpretation of language defining a patent’s scope – we conclude
