Top Patent Court Urged to Tackle More Full Bench Do-Overs

The Federal Circuit is facing new calls to hear cases as a full court to clarify the law on hot patent issues.

The U.S. Supreme Court and Congress have signaled that they aren’t going to resolve issues that have led to conflicting rulings from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, including what is patent-eligible and how courts should interpret patent terms. Appeals court rulings that differ depending on the particular three-judge panel spell uncertainty for patent practitioners, litigants, and industry players, court watchers say.

The court was created in 1982 as the sole patent appeals court precisely ...