Posts Tagged: "Saint Regis Mohawk"

IP and Sovereign Immunity: Why You Can’t Always Sue for IP Infringement

The overlap between sovereign immunity and IP issues is not something that comes up all of the time. However, when it does, the impact of the immunity can be significant. The law for certain matters, such as lawsuits in Federal court, is fairly well resolved. However, its application when new procedures are made available, such as for IPRs which were established in 2012, has provided new challenges and opportunities… So can the Federal or State government be sued for infringement under Federal patent, trademark, or copyright law? The answer often depends on the particular facts and specific legal issues of a dispute. That said, in most cases the answer is Yes for the U.S. Government and No for states and Tribal Nations, unless they have taken a specific action to waive immunity for that matter. A brief summary follows.

If it Looks Like a Kangaroo, Hops Like a Kangaroo…

What’s abundantly clear – and disastrous for both the patent system and the public – is that the PTAB’s Kafkaesque rules for complaining about anything outside of what an expert stated in a submitted declaration, including allegations of judicial misconduct, is undermining the public’s already marginal confidence in the entire IPR process. Even Franz Kafka himself would be bewildered by a process which requires one to seek permission to complain – from the very body about whom a litigant is complaining.

Why did two APJs issue an identical concurring opinion in separate cases?

Notice what APJ Harlow wrote relating to IPR2017-01068 is word for word identical to what APJ Bisk wrote relating to IPR2017-01186. Indeed, the entirety of the concurring opinions are word for word identical. Obviously, the concurring opinions were shared internally in some form or fashion prior to being issued by the PTAB. But why? It seems perfectly reasonable for the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to want to know who actually wrote these two concurring opinions. Did APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk cooperate and jointly write a single concurring opinion filed in two separate cases? Why would two APJs not assigned to the same case take it upon themselves to collaborate in writing a single concurring opinion? Are APJs not assigned to a case typically consulted? Did someone else write those opinions for APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk to make sure this particular viewpoint was incorporated into the decisions? How did APJ Harlow and APJ Bisk have access to the concurring opinions each would file?

Allegations of ex parte PTAB Communications raise more questions of due process, APA violations

Apple raised concerns of due process implications of ex parte communications and their impact on its trial. Apple’s motion demonstrates that PTAB does not publish ex parte communications into the administrative record as required by the APA, which is the exact issue Saint Regis requested discovery on and was denied… The PTAB’s decision to largely prevent the Saint Regis tribe from filing any additional papers in the case to which they are a party seems remarkable given the fact that the PTAB has opened up the proceedings of the Saint Regis trials to allow amicus briefings from third parties with an interest in the case. So, it would seem that the PTAB seems more interested in giving the agency’s supporters a say in these cases than the actual patent owner whose property rights are on the line, hardly the result one would anticipate if the PTAB were a court operating with any true sense of justice.

St. Regis Tribe requests oral hearing, seeks discovery on political pressure at PTAB

The St. Regis tribe is seeking discovery on due process concerns posed by the potential of political or third-party pressure asserted to “reach an outcome inconsistent with the binding Supreme Court and Federal Circuit precedents.”… The St. Regis tribe is seeking the oral hearing to push for discovery in a total of 18 topics. These topics include the makeup of the panels in the St. Regis proceedings, the date each APJ was added to the panel, how the makeup of the panel was decided, who determined the makeup of the merits panel, when the decision on the panel’s makeup was made as well as the disclosure of all ex parte communications concerning the St. Regis case. St. Regis is also seeking communications made on the sovereign immunity issue between specific APJs, including APJs Jacqueline Harlow and Jennifer Bisk.