{"id":8212,"date":"2016-10-07T17:18:47","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T23:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=8212"},"modified":"2016-10-07T17:18:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T23:18:47","slug":"a-couple-of-observations-about-apple-v-samsung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=8212","title":{"rendered":"A couple of observations about Apple v. Samsung"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It did seem odd that the Federal Circuit didn&#8217;t conduct oral argument or further briefing in the\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Apple v. Samsung<\/span> <em>en banc<\/em> decision. \u00a0Others have tried to explain away the decision as being unnecessary for the court&#8217;s analysis. \u00a0The cynic in me thinks that it was to avoid having to recuse any of the majority due to amicus briefing by relatives&#8217; firms. \u00a0I believe at least three of the Federal Circuit judges have relatives at firms in position to submit amicus briefs. With three recusals, that would have left the vote 4-3 without Judge Hughes&#8217; tenuous &#8220;concurrence in the result without opinion.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure why Judge Taranto recused himself. \u00a0That would be interesting to know.<\/p>\n<p>A second observation is that by rule, Judge Newman chose the author of the majority opinion. \u00a0The internal operating rule at the Federal Circuit states:<\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 18\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<blockquote><p><span>2. The presiding judge assigns the authoring responsibility for each case at the end of each day\u2019s sitting or at the end of a session. If the panel is divided, the authoring role is assigned to a member of the majority. If the presiding judge dissents, assignment will be made by the senior active member of the majority.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Because Judge Prost was a dissenter, Judge Newman became the senior active member of the majority. \u00a0She must have not wanted to write the majority opinion &#8212; as odd as that sounds &#8212; and assigned the role to Judge Moore. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It did seem odd that the Federal Circuit didn&#8217;t conduct oral argument or further briefing in the\u00a0Apple v. Samsung en banc decision. \u00a0Others have tried to explain away the decision as being unnecessary for the court&#8217;s analysis. \u00a0The cynic in me thinks that it was to avoid having to recuse any of the majority due [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8215,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8212\/revisions\/8215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}