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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 granted by the USPTO
- Disputes can be taken to the USPTO's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI)
- (To contest a BPAI decision - where?)
- 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 this 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 (or sometimes "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
External links
- http://www.uspto.gov/go/dcom/bpai/index.html - The USPTO's BPAI