Christopher B. Seaman

Standards of Proof in Civil Litigation: An Experiment from Patent Law

Standards of proof are widely assumed to matter in litigation. They operate to allocate the risk of error between litigants, as well as to indicate the relative importance attached to the ultimate decision. But despite their perceived importance, there have been relatively few empirical studies testing jurors’ comprehension and application of standards of proof, particularly in civil litigation. Patent law recently presented an opportunity to assess the potential impact of varying the standard of proof in civil cases. In Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership, the Supreme Court held that a patent’s presumption of validity can only be overcome by clear and convincing evidence. However, it also explained that the jury should be instructed that it may be easier to satisfy this standard when the party challenging the patent’s validity offered evidence that was not previously been considered by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. In this project, we conducted an experimental study to test the impact of standards of proof in patent invalidity challenges. We found that delivering the jury instruction directed by the i4i decision resulted in mock jurors finding a patent invalid at rates statistically indistinguishable from the preponderance of the evidence standard explicitly rejected by the Court in that case. This surprising result suggests that Microsoft may have actually achieved its desired outcome in i4i by making it easier for juries to invalidate questionable patents, even though it lost the case.

Toward a Federal Jurisprudence of Trade Secret Law

The May 2016 enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), which created a new federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation, raises a host of issues that federal courts will have to consider under their original subject matter jurisdiction, rather than applying state law through the courts’ diversity jurisdiction. This means that for the first time, an extensive body of federal jurisprudence will be developed to govern the civil protection and enforcement of trade secrets in the United States. In addition, due to the DTSA’s changes to the existing federal criminal law governing trade secrets, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA), federal courts will be required to further develop their EEA jurisprudence. Because the DTSA is modeled after and includes many provisions taken directly from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), it is widely anticipated that federal courts will consult and rely upon existing case law regarding the UTSA to decide how to apply the DTSA. However, nothing in the DTSA’s language mandates such an approach, and federal courts may elect to depart from state law precedent in some situations. Moreover, there are unique aspects of the DTSA, such as the ex parte seizure provision and protection for whistleblowers, which will raise questions of first impression for the federal courts. Additionally, because preexisting provisions of the EEA will be subject to greater scrutiny due to the number of civil cases that are likely to be filed under the DTSA, unresolved issues under the EEA are also likely to be extensively litigated. While it is premature to catalogue all the issues that litigants may raise in trade secret cases brought under the DTSA, this Article seeks to identify and analyze several major areas of anticipated dispute and to provide a framework for resolving them. Part I begins with a brief introduction to U.S. trade secret law. Part II details the origins and legislative history of the DTSA. Part III discusses the interpretive rules and methodologies that are likely to govern federal courts’ development of a federal jurisprudence of trade secrecy, including the circumstances under which they might rely upon existing state trade secret case law or instead develop a “federal common law” of trade secrecy. Finally, Part IV examines how key provisions of the DTSA should be interpreted in light of these rules and methodologies, organized into four subcategories: (1) “new” language in the DTSA that does not appear in state trade secret laws; (2) language “borrowed” from the UTSA that is defined by statute; (3) language “borrowed” from the UTSA that is not defined by statute; and (4) issues not clearly addressed in either the DTSA or the UTSA. In doing so, this Article provides a framework for future analysis of other provisions in the DTSA.

Patent Injunctions on Appeal: An Empirical Study of the Federal Circuit's Application of eBay

Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 seminal decision in eBay v. MercExchange, the availability of injunctive relief in patent cases remains hotly contested. For example, in a recent decision in the long-running litigation between Apple and Samsung, members of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sharply divided regarding whether an injunction was warranted to prevent Samsung from continuing to infringe several smartphone features patented by Apple. To date, however, nearly all empirical scholarship regarding eBay has focused on trial court decisions, rather than the Federal Circuit.This article represents the first comprehensive empirical study of permanent injunction decisions by the Federal Circuit following eBay. Through an original dataset of appeals in nearly 200 patent cases — representing all cases involving contested permanent injunction decisions for a 7½ year period after eBay — we assess the impact of the Federal Circuit on the availability of permanent injunctions. The findings from this study indicate that the Federal Circuit is generally more favorable to prevailing patentees regarding permanent injunctive relief than the district courts following eBay. District courts that grant an injunction after a finding of liability are highly likely to be affirmed on appeal, whereas district courts that deny an injunction have a statistically significant lower affirmance rate. This suggests the Federal Circuit is generally inclined toward a property rule rather than a liability rule as a remedy against future patent infringement. It also appears to lend support to claims by scholars and others that the Federal Circuit, as a specialized court with a large number of patent cases, is more pro-patentee than the generalist district courts. Finally, some implications of this and other empirical findings from the study are considered.