USA patent courts and appeals

This article describes which bodies handle approval, rejection, and disputes of patent validity in the USA.

The stages of litigation

• Patents are considered at the USPTO by an examiner
• Disputes can be taken to the USPTO's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI)
• To contest a BPAI decision, you go to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC)^{[reference needed]}

• When you sue someone for patent infringement, the validity of the patent can be called into question, and this litigation is in a District Court
  • When suing someone, you might also apply to the International Trade Commission to have imports of their products blocked

• To contest the district court's ruling, you go to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC)
  • When the CAFC hears a case en banc, this means that all the judges participated, not just a subset; this is usually done for important cases where the CAFC wants to set a precedent
• To contest the CAFC's ruling, you can apply to the Supreme Court (sometimes abbreviated "SCOTUS")
  • This is called applying for certiorari
• If the Supreme Court grants certiorari, they will rule on it with the highest authority of the USA

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• Case law in the USA
• German patent courts and appeals
• UK patent courts and appeals

External links

• http://www.uspto.gov/go/dcom/bpai/index.html - The USPTO's BPAI
• RECAP - an archive of "PACER" documents - this is only a small subset of US court documents, but it's the only publicly available repository