Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-916_f2ah.pdf
Page Number: 27

8 

THRYV, INC. v. CLICK-TO-CALL TECHNOLOGIES, LP 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

limit  on  the  agency’s  authority  reduces  to  a  mere  sugges-
tion.  No matter how wrong or even purposefully evasive, 
the  Director’s  assessment  of  a  petition’s  timeliness  is  al-
ways immune from review.  And even that’s not the end of 
it.  In other cases, the Board has claimed it has the right to 
review these initial timeliness decisions, and Thryv seems 
content with those rulings.  See, e.g., Medtronic, Inc. v. Rob-
ert Bosch Healthcare Systems, Inc., 839 F. 3d 1382 (CA Fed. 
2016).  So it turns out the company doesn’t really want to 
make an initial administrative timeliness decisions final; it 
just  wants  to  make  them  unreviewable  in  court,  defying
once more §314’s plain language and any rational explana-
tion, except maybe as an expedient to win the day’s case. 

B 
Confronting  so  many  problems  in  the  statute’s  text,
Thryv seeks a way around them by offering a competing ac-
count of the law’s operation.  While §314 empowers the Di-
rector to make an institution decision, Thryv asserts that
various provisions scattered throughout the chapter—such 
as §§314(a), 315(a)(1), and 315(b)—help guide the decision.
And on Thryv’s interpretation, all questions related to the 
Director’s institution decision should be insulated from re-
view, no matter where those rules are found.  What about 
the fact §314 speaks of insulating only “[t]he” “determina-
tion” “under this section”?  Thryv says this language serves 
merely to indicate which institution authority is unreview-
able—namely, the Director’s authority to institute an inter
partes proceeding pursuant to §314, rather than pursuant 
to some other provision.

This interpretation, however, makes a nullity of the very 
language it purports to explain.  Section 314 is the only sec-
tion  that  authorizes  the  Director  to  institute  inter  partes 
review, making it pointless for Congress to tell us that we’re
talking about the Director’s §314 inter partes review insti-