Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-916_f2ah.pdf
Page Number: 38

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

19 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

liberties or forms of private property this way.  Major por-
tions  of  this  country  were  settled  by  homesteaders  who
moved west on the promise of land patents from the federal 
government.  Much like an inventor seeking a patent for his 
invention, settlers seeking these governmental grants had 
to satisfy a number of conditions.  But once a patent issued, 
the granted lands became the recipient’s private property, 
a  vested  right  that  could  be  withdrawn  only  in  a  court  of 
law.  No one thinks we would allow a bureaucracy in Wash-
ington to “cancel” a citizen’s right to his farm, and do so de-
spite the government’s admission that it acted in violation
of the very statute that gave it this supposed authority.  For 
most  of  this  Nation’s  history  it  was  thought  an  invention 
patent holder “holds a property in his invention by as good 
a  title  as  the  farmer  holds  his  farm  and  flock.”  Hovey  v. 
Henry,  12  F.  Cas.  603,  604  (No.  6,742)  (CC  Mass.  1846) 
(Woodbury, J., for the court).  Yet now inventors hold noth-
ing for long without executive grace.  An issued patent be-
comes  nothing  more  than  a  transfer  slip  from  one  agency 
window to another. 

Some seek to dismiss this concern by noting that the bu-
reaucracy the AIA empowers to revoke patents is the same 
one that grants them.  But what comfort is that when the 
Constitution promises an independent judge in any case in-
volving the deprivation of life, liberty, or property?  Would 
it make things any better if we assigned the Department of
the Interior the task of canceling land patents because that
agency initially allocated many of them?  The relevant con-
stitutional  fact  is  not  which  agency  granted  a  property
right, but that a property right was granted.

The  abdication  of  our  judicial  duty  comes  with  a  price.
The Director of the Patent and Trademark Office is a polit-
ical appointee.  The AIA vests him with unreviewable au-
thority  to  institute  (or  not)  inter  partes  review.    Nothing
would  prevent  him,  it  seems,  from  insulating  his  favorite
firms and industries from this process entirely.  Those who