The plan spikes court litigation---appeals drown courts in costly litigation.
Eisenberg ’19 [Rebecca Sue Eisenberg is an American lawyer and professor. She is a Robert and Barbara Luciano Professor at the University of Michigan Law School; July 2019; Iowa Law Review; Volume 104, no. 5; “A Functional Approach to Judicial Review of PTAB Rulings on Mixed Questions of Law and Fact,” https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/sites/ilr.law.uiowa.edu/files/2023-02/Eisenberg.pdf]//LASA-AB
In this new environment, de novo review of PTAB rulings on case-specific matters seems like a waste of judicial resources that conflicts with legislative priorities. It encourages costly and time-consuming appeals and threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the AIA in providing a quicker, cheaper, and more expert alternative to district court litigation. As its caseload rises, the Federal Circuit would do better to confine its use of de novo review to generalizable legal rulings that provide guidance to the PTAB and the courts in future matters, rather than attempting to replicate the work of the PTAB from the appellate bench on routine rulings on claim interpretation and obviousness.