Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-531.ZO.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 02:19:39+00:00

Document:
Since 1987, respondent College Savings Bank, a New Jersey chartered savings bank located in Princeton, New Jersey, has marketed and sold certificates of deposit known as the CollegeSure CD, which are essentially annuity contracts for financing future college expenses. College Savings obtained a patent for its financing methodology, designed to guarantee investors sufficient funds to cover the costs of tuition for colleges. Petitioner Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expenses Board (Florida Prepaid) is an entity created by the State of Florida that administers similar tuition prepayment contracts available to Florida residents and their children. See Fla. Stat. §240.551(1) (Supp. 1998). College Savings claims that, in the course of administering its tuition prepayment program, Florida Prepaid directly and indirectly infringed College Savings patent.
Relying on these provisions, College Savings alleged that Florida Prepaid had willfully infringed its patent under §271, as well as contributed to and induced infringement. College Savings sought declaratory and injunctive relief as well as damages, attorneys fees, and costs.
After this Court decided Seminole Tribe of Fla v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), Florida Prepaid moved to dismiss the action on the grounds of sovereign immunity.3 Florida Prepaid argued that the Patent Remedy Act was an unconstitutional attempt by Congress to use its Article I powers to abrogate state sovereign immunity. College Savings responded that Congress had properly exercised its power pursuant to §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce the guarantees of the Due Process Clause in §1 of the Amendment. The United States intervened to defend the constitutionality of the statute. Agreeing with College Savings, the District Court denied Florida Prepaids motion to dismiss, 948 F. Supp. 400 (N. J. 1996), and the Federal Circuit affirmed, 148 F.3d 1343 (1998).
The Federal Circuit held that Congress had clearly expressed its intent to abrogate the States immunity from suit in federal court for patent infringement, and that Congress had the power under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to do so. Id., at 1347. The court reasoned that patents are property subject to the protections of the Due Process Clause and that Congress objective in enacting the Patent Remedy Act was permissible because it sought to prevent States from depriving patent owners of this property without due process. See id., at 13491350. The court rejected Florida Prepaids argument that it and other States had not deprived patent owners of their property without due process, and refused to deny Congress the authority to subject all states to suit for patent infringement in the federal courts, regardless of the extent of procedural due process that may exist at any particular time. Id., at 1351. Finally, the court held that the Patent Remedy Act was a proportionate response to state infringement and an appropriate measure to protect patent owners property under this Courts decision in City of Boerne, 521 U.S., at 519. The court concluded that significant harm results from state infringement of patents, 148 F.3d, at 13531354, and [t]here is no sound reason to hold that Congress cannot subject a state to the same civil consequences that face a private party infringer, id., at 1355. We granted certiorari, 525 U.S. __ (1999), and now reverse.
Here, College Savings sued the State of Florida in federal court and it is undisputed that Florida has not expressly consented to suit. College Savings and the United States argue that Florida has impliedly waived its immunity under Parden v. Terminal R. Co. of Ala. Docks Dept., 377 U.S. 184 (1964). That argument, however, is foreclosed by our decision in the companion case overruling the constructive waiver theory announced in Parden. See College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid, Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 52_ U.S. __ (1999).
Whether Congress had the power to compel States to surrender their sovereign immunity for these purposes, however, is another matter. Congress justified the Patent Remedy Act under three sources of constitutional authority: the Patent Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 8; the Interstate Commerce Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 3; and §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. See S. Rep., at 78; H. R. Rep., at 3940.4 In Seminole Tribe, of course, this Court overruled the plurality opinion in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1 (1989), our only prior case finding congressional authority to abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to an Article I power (the Commerce Clause). 517 U.S., at 7273. Seminole Tribe makes clear that Congress may not abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to its Article I powers; hence the Patent Remedy Act cannot be sustained under either the Commerce Clause or the Patent Clause. Ibid. The Federal Circuit recognized this, and College Savings and the United States do not contend otherwise.
Section 1. . . . No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
While reaffirming the view that state sovereign immunity does not yield to Congress Article I powers, this Court in Seminole Tribe also reaffirmed its holding in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976), that Congress retains the authority to abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. Our opinion explained that in Fitzpatrick, we recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment, by expanding federal power at the expense of state autonomy, had fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution. Seminole Tribe, supra, at 59. The Court further described Fitzpatrick as holding that through the Fourteenth Amendment, federal power extended to intrude upon the province of the Eleventh Amendment and therefore that §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment allowed Congress to abrogate the immunity from suit guaranteed by that Amendment. Seminole Tribe, supra, at 59.
[T]he bill is justified as an acceptable method of enforcing the provisions of the fourteenth amendment. The Court in Lemelson v. Ampex Corp. [372 F. Supp. 708 (ND Ill. 1974)] recognized that a patent is a form of property, holding that a right to compensation exists for patent infringement. Additionally, because courts have continually recognized patent rights as property, the fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving a person of property without due process of law. S. Rep., at 8 (footnotes omitted).
We have held that [t]he provisions of this article, to which §5 refers, include the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S., at 519.
But the legislation must nonetheless be appropriate under §5 as that term was construed in City of Boerne. There, this Court held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107 Stat. 1488, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq., exceeded Congress authority under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, insofar as RFRA was made applicable to the States. RFRA was enacted in direct response to this Courts decision in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which construed the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to hold that neutral, generally applicable laws may be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest. City of Boerne, supra, at 512, 514. Through RFRA, Congress reinstated the compelling governmental interest test eschewed by Smith by requiring that a generally applicable law placing a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion must be justified by a compelling governmental interest and must employ the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. 521 U.S., at 515516.
While the line between measures that remedy or prevent unconstitutional actions and measures that make a substantive change in the governing law is not easy to discern, and Congress must have wide latitude in determining where it lies, the distinction exists and must be observed. There must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end. Lacking such a connection, legislation may become substantive in operation and effect. Id., at 519520.
We thus held that for Congress to invoke §5, it must identify conduct transgressing the Fourteenth Amendments substantive provisions, and must tailor its legislative scheme to remedying or preventing such conduct.
RFRA failed to meet this test because there was little support in the record for the concerns that supposedly animated the law. Id., at 530531. And, unlike the measures in the voting rights cases, RFRAs provisions were so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventive object that it could not be understood as responsive to, or designed to prevent, unconstitutional behavior. Id., at 532; see also id., at 534 (Simply put, RFRA is not designed to identify and counteract state laws likely to be unconstitutional).
it reflects. Id., at 525. The underlying conduct at issue here is state infringement of patents and the use of sovereign immunity to deny patent owners compensation for the invasion of their patent rights. See H. R. Rep., at 3738 ([P]atent owners are effectively denied a remedy for damages resulting from infringement by a State or State entity); S. Rep., at 6 ([P]laintiffs in patent infringement cases against a State are foreclosed from damages, regardless of the State conduct). It is this conduct thenunremedied patent infringement by the Statesthat must give rise to the Fourteenth Amendment violation that Congress sought to redress in the Patent Remedy Act.
In enacting the Patent Remedy Act, however, Congress identified no pattern of patent infringement by the States, let alone a pattern of constitutional violations. Unlike the undisputed record of racial discrimination confronting Congress in the voting rights cases, see City of Boerne, supra, at 525527, Congress came up with little evidence of infringing conduct on the part of the States. The House Report acknowledged that many states comply with patent law and could provide only two examples of patent infringement suits against the States. See H. R. Rep., at 38. The Federal Circuit in its opinion identified only eight patent-infringement suits prosecuted against the States in the 110 years between 1880 and 1990. See 148 F.3d, at 13531354.
Testimony before the House Subcommittee in favor of the bill acknowledged that states are willing and able to respect patent rights. The fact that there are so few reported cases involving patent infringement claims against states underlies the point. Patent Remedy Clarification Act: Hearing on H. R. 3886 before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Administration of Justice of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 101st Cong., 2d Sess., 56 (1990) (hereinafter House Hearings) (statement of William S. Thompson); id., at 32 (statement of Robert Merges) ([S]tates do occasionally find themselves in patent infringement suits). Even the bills sponsor conceded that [w]e do not have any evidence of massive or widespread violation of patent laws by the States either with or without this State immunity. Id., at 22 (statement of Rep. Kastenmeier).6 The Senate Report, as well, contains no evidence that unremedied patent infringement by States had become a problem of national import. At most, Congress heard testimony that patent infringement by States might increase in the future, see House Hearings 22 (statement of Jeffrey Samuels); id., at 3637 (statement of Robert Merges); id., at 57 (statement of William Thompson), and acted to head off this speculative harm. See H. R. Rep., at 38.
College Savings argues that by infringing a patent and then pleading immunity to an infringement suit, a State not only infringes the patent, but deprives the patentee of property without due process of law and takes the property in the patent without paying the just compensation required by the Fifth Amendment.7 The United States declines to defend the Act as based on the Just Compensation Clause, but joins in College Savings defense of the Act as designed to prevent a State from depriving a patentee of property without due process of law. College Savings contends that Congress may not invoke §5 to protect property interests that it has created in the first place under Article 1. Patents, however, have long been considered a species of property. See Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 197 (1857) (For, by the laws of the United States, the rights of a party under a patent are his private property); cf., Consolidated Fruit-Jar Co. v. Wright, 94 U.S. 92, 96 (1877) (A patent for an invention is as much property as a patent for land). As such, they are surely included within the property of which no person may be deprived by a State without due process of law. And if the Due Process Clause protects patents, we know of no reason why Congress might not legislate against their deprivation without due process under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Though patents may be considered property for purposes of our analysis, the legislative record still provides little support for the proposition that Congress sought to remedy a Fourteenth Amendment violation in enacting the Patent Remedy Act. The Due Process Clause provides, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. U.S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1 (emphasis added). This Court has accordingly held that [i]n procedural due process claims, the deprivation by state action of a constitutionally protected interest . . . is not in itself unconstitutional; what is unconstitutional is the deprivation of such an interest without due process of law. Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 125 (1990) (emphasis deleted).
deprivation of property without due process can result).
Congress itself said nothing about the existence or adequacy of state remedies in the statute or in the Senate Report, and made only a few fleeting references to state remedies in the House Report, essentially repeating the testimony of the witnesses. See H. R. Rep., at 37, n. 158 ([T]he availability of a State remedy is tenuous and could vary significantly State to State); id., at 38 ([I]f patentees turn to the State courts for alternative forms of relief from patent infringement, the result will be a patchwork of State laws, actually undermining the goal of national uniformity in our patent system). The need for uniformity in the construction of patent law is undoubtedly important, but that is a factor which belongs to the Article I patent-power calculus, rather than to any determination of whether a state plea of sovereign immunity deprives a patentee of property without due process of law.
We have also said that a state actors negligent act that causes unintended injury to a persons property does not deprive that person of property within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 328 (1986). Actions predicated on direct patent infringement, however, do not require any showing of intent to infringe; instead, knowledge and intent are considered only with respect to damages. See 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) (1994 ed., Supp. III); 5 D. Chisum, Patents §16.02, p. 1631 (rev. ed. 1998) ( It is, of course, elementary, that an infringement may be entirely inadvertent and unintentional and without knowledge of the patent ). Congress did not focus on instances of intentional or reckless infringement on the part of the States. Indeed, the evidence before Congress suggested that most state infringement was innocent or at worst negligent. See S. Rep., at 10 ( It is not always clear that with all the products that [government] buy[s], that anyone is really aware of the patent status of any particular invention or device or product ); H. R. Rep., at 39 ([I]t should be very rare for a court to find . . . willful infringement on the part of a State or State agency). Such negligent conduct, however, does not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The legislative record thus suggests that the Patent Remedy Act does not respond to a history of widespread and persisting deprivation of constitutional rights of the sort Congress has faced in enacting proper prophylactic §5 legislation. City of Boerne, 521 U.S., at 526. Instead, Congress appears to have enacted this legislation in response to a handful of instances of state patent infringement that do not necessarily violate the Constitution. Though the lack of support in the legislative record is not determinative, see id., at 531, identifying the targeted constitutional wrong or evil is still a critical part of our §5 calculus because [s]trong measures appropriate to address one harm may be an unwarranted response to another, lesser one, id., at 530. Here, the record at best offers scant support for Congress conclusion that States were depriving patent owners of property without due process of law by pleading sovereign immunity in federal- court patent actions.
Because of this lack, the provisions of the Patent Remedy Act are so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventive object that [they] cannot be understood as responsive to, or designed to prevent, unconstitutional behavior. Id., at 532. An unlimited range of state conduct would expose a State to claims of direct, induced, or contributory patent infringement, and the House Report itself cited testimony acknowledging  it[]s difficult for us to identify a patented product or process which might not be used by a state.  H. R. Rep., supra, at 38.10 Despite subjecting States to this expansive liability, Congress did nothing to limit the coverage of the Act to cases involving arguable constitutional violations, such as where a State refuses to offer any state-court remedy for patent owners whose patents it had infringed. Nor did it make any attempt to confine the reach of the Act by limiting the remedy to certain types of infringement, such as nonnegligent infringement or infringement authorized pursuant to state policy; or providing for suits only against States with questionable remedies or a high incidence of infringement.
Instead, Congress made all States immediately amenable to suit in federal court for all kinds of possible patent infringement and for an indefinite duration. Our opinion in City of Boerne discussed with approval the various limits that Congress imposed in its voting rights measures, see 521 U.S., at 532533, and noted that where a congressional enactment pervasively prohibits constitutional state action in an effort to remedy or to prevent unconstitutional state action, limitations of this kind tend to ensure Congress means are proportionate to ends legitimate under §5, id., at 533. The Patent Remedy Acts indiscriminate scope offends this principle, and is particularly incongruous in light of the scant support for the predicate unconstitutional conduct that Congress intended to remedy. In sum, it simply cannot be said that many of [the acts of infringement] affected by the congressional enactment have a significant likelihood of being unconstitutional. Id., at 532.
The historical record and the scope of coverage therefore make it clear that the Patent Remedy Act cannot be sustained under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The examples of States avoiding liability for patent infringement by pleading sovereign immunity in a federal-court patent action are scarce enough, but any plausible argument that such action on the part of the State deprived patentees of property and left them without a remedy under state law is scarcer still. The statutes apparent and more basic aims were to provide a uniform remedy for patent infringement and to place States on the same footing as private parties under that regime.11 These are proper Article I concerns, but that Article does not give Congress the power to enact such legislation after Seminole Tribe.
1. College Savings also filed a separate action alleging that Florida Prepaid had made false claims about its own product in violation of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a). The District Court dismissed the Lanham Act suit on Eleventh Amendment grounds, the Third Circuit affirmed, and we granted College Savings petition in that case on the same day we granted the petition in this case. See 525 U.S. ___ (1999). The Lanham Act suit is the subject of our opinion in College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 52_ U.S. __ (1999).
2. Section 271 still provides in relevant part: (a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent. (b) Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer. (c) Whoever offers to sell or sells within the United States or imports into the United States a component of a patented machine, manufacture, combination or composition, or a material or apparatus for use in practicing a patented process, constituting a material part of the invention, knowing the same to be especially made or especially adapted for use in an infringement of such patent, and not a staple article or commodity of commerce suitable for substantial noninfringing use, shall be liable as a contributory infringer. 35 U.S.C. § 271 (1994 ed. and Supp. III).
3. The District Court concluded that, for purposes of immunity from suit, Florida Prepaid is an arm of the State of Florida, a conclusion the parties did not dispute before either the Federal Circuit or this Court.
[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the Several States, and with the Indian Tribes. Art. I, §8, cl. 3. The relevant portions of the Fourteenth Amendment are discussed below.
5. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966); Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970); City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156 (1980).
7. There is no suggestion in the language of the statute itself, or in the House or Senate Reports of the bill which became the statute, that Congress had in mind the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Since Congress was so explicit about invoking its authority under Article I and its authority to prevent a State from depriving a person of property without due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment, we think this omission precludes consideration of the Just Compensation Clause as a basis for the Patent Remedy Act.
. You could bring a deceit suit. You could try just a general unfair competition suit. A restitution is one that has occurred to me as a possible basis of recovery); id., at 34 (Another problem with this approach is that it assumes that such state law remedies will be available in every state in which the patentees product is sold. This may or may not be true); id., at 47 (statement of William Thompson) (In this case there is no balance, since there are noor at least there are not very effective patent remedies at the State level); id., at 57 (The court in Lane [v. First Nat. Bank of Boston, 687 F. Supp. 11 (Mass. 1988),] pointed out that the appellant may be able to obtain money damages by recourse to the Massachusetts tort claims act or sue the state for deceit, conversion, or unfair competition under Massachusetts law. The court also noted a Massachusetts statute which provides that damages may be recovered from the state when private property is confiscated for a public purpose. While many states may have similar statutes, the courts surmise that intellectual property infringement cases may be pursued in some state courts offer us little comfort); id., at 60 ([I]t sounds to me like it is a very difficult area to predict what would happen. There is a rich variety of potential causes of action, as the prior speaker [Merges] pointed out).
9. It is worth mentioning that the State of Florida provides remedies to patent owners for alleged infringement on the part of the State. Aggrieved parties may pursue a legislative remedy through a claims bill for payment in full, Fla. Stat. §11.065 (1997), or a judicial remedy through a takings or conversion claim, see Jacobs Wind Electric Co. v. Florida Dept. of Transp., 626 So. 2d 1333 (Fla. 1993).
10. The relevant testimony stated in full: The comments regarding copyright centered on substantial use of copyrighted textbooks by state universities as well as state use of copyrighted music and computer software. State use of patented products is more diverse and more substantial. Patented inventions are involved in all manner of commonly used machines, tools, instruments, chemicals, compounds, materials, and devices of all description and purpose. Furthermore, patented processes are commonplace. States and state instrumentalities own and operate hospitals, universities, prisons, and libraries. States build and maintain roads. States provide facilities and equipment for large numbers of employees who perform all manner of state supported activities. It[]s difficult for us to identify a patented product or process which might not be used by a state. House Hearings 55 (statement of William Thompson).
11. See 35 U.S.C. § 271(h) (stating that States and state entities shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity); see also H. R. Rep., at 40 (The Committee believes that the full panoply of remedies provided in the patent law should be available to patentees whose legitimate rights have been infringed by States or State entities); S. Rep., at 14. Thus, contrary to the dissents intimation, see post, at 16, the Patent Remedy Act does not put States in the same position as the United States. Under the Patent Remedy Act, States are subject to all the remedies available to plaintiffs in infringement actions, which include punitive damages and attorneys fees, see 35 U.S.C. § 284 285, as well as injunctive relief, see §283. In waiving its own immunity from patent infringement actions in 28 U.S.C. § 1498(a) (1994 ed. and Supp. III), however, the United States did not consent to either treble damages or injunctive relief, and allowed reasonable attorneys fees only in a narrow class of specified instances.

References: §240
 §271
 v. 
 §5
 §1
 §5
 v. 
 v. 
 §8
 §8
 §5
 v. 
 v. 
 §5
 v. 
 §5
 v. 
 §5
 § 2000
 §5
 v. 
 §5
 §5
 v. 
 v. 
 §5
 §1
 v. 
 v. 
 § 271
 §16
 §5
 §5
 §5
 §5
 § 1125
 v. 
 § 271
 §8
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 §11
 v. 
 § 271
 § 284
 §283
 § 1498