Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-916_f2ah.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

ahead anyway.  No one could dispute that Thryv’s predeces-
sor  and  privy  had  been  “served  with  a  complaint  alleging
infringement of the patent” more than a decade earlier.  But 
that complaint didn’t count, the Board declared, because it 
was dismissed without prejudice.  The Board cited nothing 
in  §315(b)  suggesting  this  distinction  makes  a  difference
under the statute’s plain terms.  Instead, the Board tiptoed 
past the problem and proceeded to invalidate almost all of 
the patent claims before it, even those the Patent Office it-
self had affirmed in its own ex parte proceeding years be-
fore.  No doubt this was exactly what Thryv hoped for in its
second bite at the administrative apple. 

Thryv’s victory may have taken years to achieve, but it
didn’t  seem  calculated  to  last  long.    Predictably,  CTC  ap-
pealed the Board’s interpretation of §315(b) to the Federal 
Circuit.  And just as unsurprisingly, the court held that dis-
missed complaints do count as complaints, so Thryv’s inter
partes administrative challenge was time barred from the 
start.  Mr.  DuVal’s  patent  had  already  survived  one 
ex parte reexamination Thryv instigated.  The patent had 
been the subject of long and repeated litigation in federal 
courts.  The  agency  had  no  business  opening  yet  another 
new inquiry into this very old patent. 

But  Thryv  had  one  maneuver  left.    It  sought  review  in 
this  Court,  insisting  that  Article  III  courts  lack  authority 
even to say what the law demands.  According to Thryv, a 
different provision, §314(d), renders the agency’s interpre-
tations and applications of §315(b) immune from judicial re-
view.  So the Board can err; it can even act in defiance of 
plain congressional limits on its authority.  But, in Thryv’s 
view,  a  court  can  do  nothing  about  it.  Enforcement  of 
§315(b)’s time bar falls only to the very Patent Office offi-
cials  whose  authority  it  seeks  to  restrain.    Inventors  like 
Mr. DuVal just have to hope that the bureaucracy revoking
their property rights will take the extra trouble of doing so 
in accordance with law.