Andy Schlafly

Jury verdicts are supposed to be sacrosanct. The biggest opposition to the ratification of our Constitution in 1788 was due to its lack of protection for jury trials in civil cases. The omission was corrected by adding the Seventh Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights. So, when a patent holder wins a jury verdict, that should mean more than the paper the verdict is written on. Yet it does not, under recent decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. On behalf of Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, I filed an amicus brief on November 4 in support of a petition for rehearing en banc by the full Federal Circuit to end the abusive authority of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to overturn jury verdicts. Many other amicus briefs were subsequently filed in this case, Chrimar Systems, Inc. v. ALE USA, Inc. FKA Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise USA, Inc. (Fed. Circ. Case No. 18-2420), to make similar requests of the Federal Circuit