Court Opinion

ID: 9479623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:23:50.803486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:09.986561
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with this court’s holding that, on the facts of this case, no sufficient basis for interlocutory appeal has been shown. I reach this conclusion applying the standards that we and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals have traditionally exercised with respect to appeals from the Patent and Trademark Office. See, e.g., Champion Products, Inc. v. Ohio State Univ., 614 F.2d 763, 765, 204 USPQ 833, 834 (CCPA 1980); Toro Co. v. Hardigg Industries, Inc., 549 F.2d 785, 193 USPQ 149 (CCPA 1977); SCOA Industries, Inc. v. Kennedy & Cohen, Inc., 530 F.2d 953, 955, 189 USPQ 15, 17 (CCPA 1976); Knickerbocker Toy Co. v. Faultless Starch Co., 467 F.2d 501, 175 USPQ 417 (CCPA 1972). Without more, this resolves the matter before us. On that basis I concur in the court’s judgment.
However, I do not concur in the court’s in banc ruling that rewrites the text of our jurisdictional statute; and does so unnecessarily. For appeals arising in the Patent and Trademark Office, as for appeals directly from the Secretary of Commerce and under the Plant Variety Protection Act, our jurisdictional statute authorizes greater flexibility than for other sources of our appeals: (emphases added)
28 U.S.C. § 1295(a). The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction—
(1) of an appeal from a final decision of a district court [based] on section 1338
(2) of an appeal from a final decision of a district court [based] on section 1346
(3) of an appeal from a final decision of the United States Claims Court.
(4) of an appeal from a decision of—
(A) the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences ...
(B) the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks or the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ...
(C)a district court [under] section 145 or 146 of title 35;
(5) of an appeal from a final decision of the United States Court of International Trade;
(6) to review the final determinations of the United States International Trade Commission ...
(7) to review, by appeal on questions of law only, findings of the Secretary of Commerce ...
(8) of an appeal under section 71 of the Plant Variety Protection Act ...
(9) of an appeal from a final order or final decision of the Merit Systems Protection Board ...
(10) of an appeal from a final decision of an agency board of contract appeals
The pattern of these clauses shows that the omission of the word “final” in paragraph (4) was not accidental. I know no reason for us to abdicate, in advance and for all circumstances, the flexibility thereby granted. The court’s holding today, and its implicit criticism of the rare CCPA cases that accepted interlocutory appeals, viz. Toro Co. and Knickerbocker Toy, adds a rigor that was expressly omitted by Congress. We must assume that the statutory language was designed to allow this court to accommodate any special considerations specific to these sources of appeals.
This does not mean that § 1295(a)(4) can be read as requiring us indiscriminately to accept all interlocutory appeals. As the Commissioner points out in his brief ami-cus curiae, the CCPA had accepted such appeals on the rarest occasions. Nor is the question whether “the Gillespie dictum” is applicable to PTO appeals, not because Gillespie has been limited to its facts, Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 477 n. 30, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2462 n. 30, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978), but because § 1295(a)(4) allows us to establish standards that are specifically adapted to appeals from the PTO.
Even on the position now taken by this court, the criticism of Toro and Knickerbocker Toy is unwarranted. Although these cases applied the Gillespie standard, *1070both cases having been decided before Coopers & Lybrand, we don’t know whether there might have been other grounds for acceptance of these appeals. A sister court has observed that “[n]o federal appellate court, to our knowledge, has ever followed the Gillespie dictum in a case in which the appeal could not be justified on the basis of some other, narrower, policy demanding deviation from the finality rule”. Green v. Dept. of Commerce, 618 F.2d 836, 841 (D.C.Cir.1980). Such traditional grounds include interlocutory appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) of orders that grant or deny injunctions or have the effect of granting or denying injunctions, Carson v. American Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 84, 101 S.Ct. 993, 996, 67 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981), or appeals under the collateral order doctrine of Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). See generally Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. v. Mayacamas Corp., 485 U.S. 271, 108 S.Ct. 1133, 1143, 99 L.Ed.2d 296 (1988).
In sum, 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4) authorizes a greater appellate flexibility as to decisions from the Patent and Trademark Office, whether from the Commissioner, the PTO tribunals, or the district courts under 35 U.S.C. §§ 145 and 146. In optimum exercise of our responsibility with respect to the Patent and Trademark Office, I would not reject this statutory authority.