Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-916_f2ah.pdf
Page Number: 32.0

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

13 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

§315(b) bars challengers who have already spent a year lit-
igating  in  court  from  petitioning  the  agency,  but  leaves
open the possibility that the agency might still institute in-
ter partes review if a different, eligible petitioner happens
to come along.  And this theoretical possibility, Thryv tells 
us, suggests that the agency was meant to be allowed to act 
as it wants. 

But Thryv’s reply here is like saying Article III’s “case or 
controversy” requirement isn’t really a limit on the power 
of federal courts, because it’s always possible that some lit-
igant with a live dispute will come forward and require the 
court to settle a particular legal question.  The implacable 
fact  is  that  nothing  in  the  AIA  gives  the  Director  or  the 
Board  freewheeling  authority  to  conduct  inter  partes  re-
view.  The statute demands the participation of a real party 
in interest, a petitioner who is not barred by prior litigation 
and who is willing to face estoppel should he lose.  §§311(a), 
315.  And if, as seems likely in our case and many others, 
no one is willing and able to meet those conditions, the law 
does not permit inter partes review.  So rather than a claim 
processing  rule,  §315  is  both  a  constraint  on  the  agency’s
power and a valuable guarantee that a patent owner must 
battle the same foe only once. 

Realizing that its textual arguments are too strained to
demonstrate clearly and convincingly that Congress meant 
to  displace  judicial  review,  Thryv  asks  us  to  draw  “infer-
ences” from the AIA “as a whole.”  Brief for Petitioner 16 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  In particular, the com-
pany tells us that Congress’s “overriding purpose” in creat-
ing inter partes review was to “weed out poor quality pat-
ents,” and that judicial enforcement of §315(b) would slow 
this progress.  Id., at 24 (quotation altered).  But to support
its thematic account of the law’s goals, Thryv rests on one 
thin reed after another—a House Report here, a floor state-
ment there, and a few quotations from Cuozzo Speed Tech-
nologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. ___ (2016), that summarize