Fed. Circ. En Banc Dissents Boost Odds of High Court Review

Samuel Goldstein and Seth Lloyd were featured in a Law360 article discussing their recent Federal Circuit analysis finding that denied requests for review by the full Federal Circuit that draw at least one dissent appear to boost the odds that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a petition for certiorari.

Their analysis found that “of the 33 petitions for en banc review that the Federal Circuit denied and that drew a dissent over the last five years, 25 resulted in petitions for certiorari, with the justices granting seven of those,” Law360 reported, adding that Samuel and Seth, “also found that patent subject matter eligibility and issues related to interpreting the America Invents Act were the most common among denied Federal Circuit en banc petitions with at least one dissent.”

“Those are issues that have been heavily litigated in recent years and are ones over which reasonable minds can disagree,” Samuel said, telling Law360 that this finding was expected. However, he noted that he was surprised by the fact that “the cases that seem to draw the most dissents from en banc denials don’t often seem to be the ones eventually taken up by the Supreme Court for review.”

Read the full article.