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2  OIL STATES ENERGY SERVICES, LLC v. GREENE’S ENERGY 

GROUP, LLC 
Syllabus 

  1. Inter partes review does not violate Article III.  Pp. 5–17. 

(a) Under  this  Court’s  precedents,  Congress  has  significant  lati-
tude to assign adjudication of public rights to entities other than Ar-
ticle  III  courts.    Executive  Benefits  Ins.  Agency  v.  Arkison,  573  U. S. 
___,  ___.    Inter  partes  review  falls  squarely  within  the  public-rights 
doctrine.  The decision to grant a patent is a matter involving public 
rights.  Inter partes review is simply a reconsideration of that grant, 
and  Congress  has  permissibly  reserved  the  PTO’s  authority  to  con-
duct that reconsideration.  Pp. 5–10. 

(i) The grant of a patent falls within the public-rights doctrine.  

United States v. Duell, 172 U. S. 576, 582–583.  Granting a patent in-
volves  a  matter  “arising  between  the  government  and  others.”    Ex 
parte  Bakelite  Corp.,  279  U. S.  438,  451.    Specifically,  patents  are 
“public  franchises.”  Seymour  v.  Osborne,  11  Wall.  516,  533.    Addi-
tionally, granting patents is one of “the constitutional functions” that 
can be carried out by “the executive or legislative departments” with-
out  “ ‘judicial  determination.’ ”    Crowell  v.  Benson,  285  U. S.  22,  50–
51.  Pp. 7–8. 

(ii) Inter  partes  review  involves  the  same  basic  matter  as  the 
grant of a patent.  It is “a second look at an earlier . . . grant,” Cuozzo 
Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. ___, ___, and it involves the 
same  interests  as  the  original  grant,  see  Duell,  supra,  at  586.    That 
inter partes review occurs after the patent has issued does not make 
a difference here.  Patents remain “subject to [the Board’s] authority” 
to  cancel  outside  of  an  Article  III  court,  Crowell,  supra,  at  50,  and 
this  Court  has  recognized  that  franchises  can  be  qualified  in  this 
manner,  see,  e.g.,  Louisville  Bridge  Co.  v.  United  States,  242  U. S. 
409, 421.  Pp. 8–10. 

(b) Three  decisions  that  recognize  patent  rights  as  the  “private 
property  of  the  patentee,”  United  States  v.  American  Bell  Telephone 
Co.,  128  U. S.  315,  370,  do  not  contradict  this  conclusion.    See  also 
McCormick  Harvesting  Machine  Co.  v.  Aultman,  169  U. S.  606,  609; 
Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 197.  Nor do they foreclose the kind 
of post-issuance administrative review that Congress has authorized 
here.  Those cases were decided under the Patent Act of 1870 and are 
best  read  as  describing  the  statutory  scheme  that  existed  at  that 
time.  Pp. 10–11. 

(c) Although  patent  validity  was  often  decided  in  18th-century 
English  courts  of  law,  that  history  does  not  establish  that  inter 
partes review violates the “general” principle that “Congress may not 
‘withdraw  from  judicial  cognizance  any  matter  which,  from  its  na-
ture, is the  subject of a  suit at the common law,” Stern v. Marshall, 
564  U. S.  462,  484.    Another  means  of  canceling  a  patent  at  that 
time—a  petition  to  the  Privy  Council  to  vacate  a  patent—closely  re-