Federal Circuit Easily Handling Patent Appeal Surge, Judges Say

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is efficiently managing a swelling docket caused by a rise in appeals of Patent and Trademark Office decisions, two of the court’s judges said Oct. 20.

“We don’t have a backlog,” Federal Circuit Judge Kara Stoll said. “There are a lot of patent cases and we’ve been able to manage them and we have the time to handle them,” she told attendees at the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s annual meeting in Washington.

The Federal Circuit hears all appeals from the PTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which decides administrative patent ...