by Dennis Crouch
Peter v. NantKwest (Supreme Court 2019) [TRANSCRIPT]
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 7, 2019 in this case involving the question of attorney fees in Section 145 civil actions. I'll agree with Mark Walsh who identified this as a "a dry, procedural patent case." But, I really enjoyed the oral arguments -- Read some of the drama below.
Before getting too dramatic: I recognize that the result of this case is basically not going to have much of any impact on patent cases. So, perhaps one benefit is that the court is unlikely to ruin the patent system with its decision here. Depending upon the outcome, Section 145 civil actions will be seen as relatively more/less expensive for the applicant. But, they are already very expensive for an applicant to pay its own expenses. My take is that the added PTO-attorney expense will be a relatively small extension of the already high-costs assuming that the PTO continues to be fairly thrifty in its defense of these cases. On the PTO side, the agency has to pay its attorneys from collected fees somehow. If it doesn't get the fees from the 145 challenger, then it will collect them from the applicant pool in general (about $1.60 per applicant) as it has done for many years.
Conventional wisdom in patent cases is reversal. The Supreme Court does not take cases to offer congratulations to the lower court. And the absence of circuit splits means that there isn't a right vs wrong appellate court. My read of the oral argument though goes against this conventional wisdom -- I'm betting on affirmance. The Gov't dropped its argument that the American Rule does not apply; and so the American Rule as applied in other areas has the potential of being undermined by a Gov't win here.