Clarifying a standard of review is not strengthening IP rights
Mandel ’18 [Gregory N.; January; Dean & Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law, Temple University; Minnesota Law Review, “Institutional Fracture in Intellectual Property Law: The Supreme Court Versus Congress,” 102:803]
A number of the Supreme Court decisions are neutral in this regard. Neutral coding can occur for multiple reasons, such as procedural decisions that affect both intellectual property owners and opposing parties in equivalent manners, or decisions that regulate ownership among competing claimants. An example of the former type of neutral decision is Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc.13 This case clarified the proper standard of appellate review for a district court’s factual findings made in patent claim construction.14 The Court held that the standard of review is clear error,15 a decision that neither strengthened nor weakened intellectual property owner rights because sometimes district courts construe patent claims in favor of patentees and other times in favor of alleged infringers.16 Decisions that neither strengthened nor weakened intellectual property rights were classified as neutral.