The Judge Newman Story in Her Own Words: IPWatchdog Unleashed

This week, we have a special guest for the IPWatchdog Unleashed podcast—the Honorable Pauline Newman, Circuit Judge on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts (links here) or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout. We have also posted a complete transcript, and you can also watch the video on YouTube.

At the end of September, we invited Judge Newman to speak during lunch during the final day of IPWatchdog LIVE, and many in attendance were quite moved by her remarks. Judge Newman received a standing ovation, and those in attendance remarked that after listening to her speak, there was no doubt that she wasn’t suffering from any mental decline, despite what her colleagues on the court erroneously have charged.

IPWatchdog LIVE is so named because of the contemporaneous conversations and panels, and the fact that we don’t record them, so if you want to hear the discussions and participate in the conversation, you need to attend. So, that means there’s no recording of Judge Newman’s remarks at LIVE this year. This is why I decided to invite Judge Newman to speak at our annual Life Sciences program at IPWatchdog’s Studios, where we could record her presentation and remarks. Judge Newman accepted, and on Tuesday, October 29, she spoke to our assembly.

Her remarks on October 29 were largely unscripted, although she did have some notes that she consulted from time to time during her nearly 45-minute presentation. And while what she said was not precisely what she had said at IPWatchdog Live, this did give Judge Newman a platform to tell her side of the story in her own words and to discuss what the Federal Circuit is doing. So powerful were her comments that at least several in the audience were seen shedding a tear, and she received a hearty standing ovation.

“I find that I will no longer conceal my concern about the Federal Circuit and how the judicial branch overall is serving, because our role is to serve the communities on which the public depends,” Judge Newman said. “My colleagues decided in some secret procedure, the nature of which I still don’t know, that I am physically disabled and mentally incompetent, and they told me so, and that I would hear no more cases. As you can imagine, I protested, and after I filed suit in the district court to raise the Constitutional issue, they withdrew the charge of disability, physical or mental, but they didn’t withdraw the penalty, which is still in effect.”

Judge Newman is being wrongfully persecuted by her colleagues on the Federal Circuit. She has taken and passed with flying colors the three different mental evaluations she has submitted to, all conducted by different, highly regarded evaluators. And in addition to the final mental evaluation she was given a cutting edge CT scan of her brain, which showed no signs of cognitive decline, and in fact rather remarkably showed a healthy brain that looked to be the scan of someone in their 20s.

Faced with all the inaccurate statements in the complaint, which have never been correct despite their falsity, the Federal Circuit persists in excluding Judge Newman from hearing cases, which every day is becoming a more significant constitutional crisis.

So, against this backdrop we are pleased to present the Honorable Pauline Newman.