Opinion ID: 449779
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Seventh Amendment and Article III

Text: 48 Gould asserts that he has been deprived of the right to have validity determined by a jury and an Article III court, both of which rights are founded in the Constitution. Gould argues that these rights were part of the bundle of property rights that accompanied the grant of his patents, and thus that the retroactive scope of reexamination worked a prohibited deprivation. 49 The right to a jury trial on issues of patent validity that may arise in a suit for patent infringement is protected by the Seventh Amendment. See Swofford v. B & W, Inc., 336 F.2d 406, 142 USPQ 291 (5th Cir.1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 962, 85 S.Ct. 653, 13 L.Ed.2d 557 (1965). Gould's position is that, even if his patents may have been erroneously issued, the law in effect at the time of that issuance entitled him to a jury determination of that question. 50 Similarly, Gould complains of the loss of his historic right to have validity determined by an Article III court. The Court in McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. v. Aultman, 169 U.S. 606, 18 S.Ct. 443, 42 L.Ed. 875 (1898), establishing on constitutional grounds that an applicant for a reissue patent need not acquiesce in any finding of invalidity or unpatentability by the reissue examiner, affirmed that an issued patent could not be set aside other than by an Article III court. 51 Thus, Gould presents a facial attack on that aspect of the reexamination statute which grants the PTO authority to set aside claims in issued patents, as applied to patents granted prior to enactment of the statute. 52 Gould directs our attention to Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 102 S.Ct. 2858, 73 L.Ed.2d 598 (1982), wherein the Supreme Court refused to uphold the legislative assignment to bankruptcy courts of common law disputes historically adjudicated by Article III courts. Gould observes that the outcome in Northern Pipeline shows the Court's unwillingness to allow rights that traditionally had been adjudicated in Article III courts to be shifted to Article I courts. But other factors were relevant, particularly that the matters proposed to be committed to Article I courts involved private rights; the Court therefore found inapplicable authority upholding the constitutionality of legislative courts and administrative agencies created by Congress to adjudicate cases involving 'public rights' . The Court observed that a matter of public rights must at a minimum arise 'between the government and others' . Id. at 69-70, 102 S.Ct. at 2870-71, quoting Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 51, 52 S.Ct. 285, 292, 76 L.Ed. 598 (1932). 53 In contrast with the private rights at issue in Northern Pipeline, the grant of a valid patent is primarily a public concern. Validity often is brought into question in disputes between private parties, but the threshold question usually is whether the PTO, under the authority assigned to it by Congress, properly granted the patent. At issue is a right that can only be conferred by the government. See Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. at 50, 52 S.Ct. at 292. Thus we find no constitutional infirmity, under the analysis suggested by Northern Pipeline, in patent reexamination by the PTO. 54 The holding of McCormick Harvesting may also be distinguished, in view of Congressional intent to provide a separate procedure for reexamination while preserving the reissue practice. The purpose of reissuance of patents is to enable correction of errors made by the inventor, at the initiative of the inventor. The reexamination statute's purpose is to correct errors made by the government, to remedy defective governmental (not private) action, and if need be to remove patents that should never have been granted. We do not read McCormick Harvesting as forbidding Congress to authorize reexamination to correct governmental mistakes, even against the will of the patent owner. A defectively examined and therefore erroneously granted patent must yield to the reasonable Congressional purpose of facilitating the correction of governmental mistakes. This Congressional purpose is presumptively correct, and we find that it carries no insult to the Seventh Amendment and Article III. 55 The Commissioner reminds us of the complex structure of modern government through administrative agencies, and we agree that such delegation of administrative functions, often including quasi-judicial functions, is now beyond facial challenge--provided that constitutional safeguards are respected. The massive body of jurisprudence that suffered the evolution of administrative agencies in the federal government insisted on fair opportunity for judicial review and full respect for due process. When these standards are met, the Constitution does not require that we strike down statutes, otherwise having a reasonable legislative purpose, that invest administrative agencies with regulatory functions previously filled by judge and jury. 56 The extensive jurisprudence interpreting and applying the Seventh Amendment and Article III supports our conclusion, affirming that of the district court, that Gould has not suffered a constitutional deprivation of any rights under the Amendment or Article by virtue of either the postponement of the exercise of these rights, or by interposition of reexamination.