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Page Number: 14

10 

UNITED STATES v. ARTHREX, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

powers  of  “administrative  oversight.”    Ibid.  The  Director 
fixes the rate of pay for APJs, controls the decision whether
to institute inter partes review, and selects the APJs to re-
consider  the  validity  of  the  patent.    35  U. S. C.  §§3(b)(6), 
6(c), 314(a).  The Director also promulgates regulations gov-
erning inter partes review, issues prospective guidance on
patentability issues, and designates past PTAB decisions as 
“precedential”  for  future  panels.    §§3(a)(2)(A),  316(a)(4); 
Brief  for  United  States  6.    He  is  the  boss,  except  when  it  
comes to the one thing that makes the APJs officers exer-
cising “significant authority” in the first place—their power
to issue decisions on patentability.  Buckley, 424 U. S., at 
126.  In  contrast  to  the  scheme  approved  by  Edmond,  no 
principal officer at any level within the Executive Branch 
“direct[s] and supervise[s]” the work of APJs in that regard.
520 U. S., at 663. 

Edmond goes a long way toward resolving this dispute.
What was “significant” to the outcome there—review by a 
superior  executive  officer—is  absent  here:  APJs  have  the
“power  to  render  a  final  decision  on  behalf  of  the  United 
States” without any such review by their nominal superior
or any other principal officer in the Executive Branch.  Id., 
at 665.  The only possibility of review is a petition for re-
hearing, but Congress unambiguously specified that “[o]nly 
the Patent and Trial Appeal Board may grant rehearings.” 
§6(c).  Such  review  simply  repeats  the  arrangement  chal-
lenged as unconstitutional in this suit.

This “diffusion of power carries with it a diffusion of ac-
countability.”  Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 497.  The 
restrictions on review relieve the Director of responsibility 
for the final decisions rendered by APJs purportedly under
his  charge.  The  principal  dissent’s  observation  that  “the
Director alone has the power to take final action to cancel a
patent claim or confirm it,” post, at 7 (opinion of THOMAS, 
J.), simply ignores the undisputed fact that the Director’s