I think this needs to be changed. I can't think of any good reason why in a case like this, where it has both patent and copyright claims, that the appeals need to go to the same court. Why not have the copyright issues appealed to the Ninth Circuit and the patent issues appealed to the CAFC?
At trail court it makes sense to join issues that would normally be heard in separate courts together when they involve the same underlying facts, because there will be a lot of overlap in witnesses and evidence, and a trial court is both a trier of fact and a trier of law. Holding separate trials in different courts would be wasteful, annoying, and could get complicated and troubling if different courts found different facts.
Those considerations mostly do not apply at the appellate level. The appeals court does not determine facts. It does not hear witnesses. It just deals with the record from the trial court and the arguments from the attorneys.
Economy of justice concerns are the biggest reason, though there are other reasons to keep the case together (e.g., because it is one case between the same parties and different issues will rely on intersecting sets of determinations, so splitting it by the domain of the ultimate issues will open up the possibility of conflicting rulings on the same intermediate issues, which is not only ugly in and of itself, but especially ugly if the various parts of the split case are both appealed from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.)
> Why not have the copyright issues appealed to the Ninth Circuit and the patent issues appealed to the CAFC?
I know the theory but has practice actually born out the supposed benefits of the CAFC as the single Court of Appeals for patent cases? Why not just send the whole thing to the Circuit Courts whether or not there are patent issues?
> At trial court it makes sense to join issues that would normally be heard in separate courts together when they involve the same underlying facts, because there will be a lot of overlap in witnesses and evidence, and a trial court is both a trier of fact and a trier of law. Holding separate trials in different courts would be wasteful, annoying, and could get complicated and troubling if different courts found different facts.
You really get all the same issues with splitting questions of law, since the ultimate legal decision on a patent question may depend on legal decisions on evidentiary and other questions also raised on appeal, on which ultimate non-patent counts in the same case may also rely. A clean separation is not realistic.
> The appeals court does not determine facts.
Yes, it does, though the standard of review for fact questions is usually one of "clear error".
Apparently, because previously different Circuit Courts interpreted the Patent Act differently, leading to forum shopping as problematic as what happens in ED Texas today. Except back then there was no recourse -- at least today you can take your appeals to a more consistent court.
> I know the theory but has practice actually born out the supposed benefits of the CAFC as the single Court of Appeals for patent cases?
This study partially tackles that question from multiple angles and the conclusion is mostly favorable to the existence of a CAFC:
Google and Oracle and a bunch of other companies all make cars. All of the cars have a gearshift with the same pattern, because long ago the company who built the first car encouraged other carmakers to copy their design. But then Oracle buys the company who built the first car and tries to sue Google (and only Google) for copying their shift pattern.
http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/api-copyrightability-to-b...
The crucial point being that code written for Dalvik is actually not compatible with Java runtime. So how can you argue that borrowing code without consent is good for interoperability... when the product you deliver just break it?
Google never called it Java
The first sentence is "Android apps are written in the Java programming language."
If that is not calling it Java, it is close enough as to be indistinguishable to the average programmer.
Oracle is literally trying to destroy innovation in the software industry, and they may just pull it off. Their products, their name, and their employees should be shunned for trying to destroy the single most important economic invention of all time: innovation in the software industry. This is not OK, this is not just politics, and they must be stopped.
Read this article, spread the news, write your congresspeople, donate to the EFF, and cancel your Oracle contracts.
They said that sounded pretty stupid, I agreed, but its the current law as far as I can tell.
Making up a street address would normally not involve creative expression, but even if it does, its intended purpose is to allow others to use the address for various purposes, which would then be fair use.
In this analogy, Google did not mail something to this address, rather created another house with the same address so that anyone sending mail to Oracle is able to redirect it to Google without changing the address (by posting into a different mailbox).
Design of an API certainly involves creative expression, so much that many developers are not able to get it right. So I do not think the analogy is valid anyways.
BAM!
The one distinction complicating this a little is more thought and creativity goes into designing an api then designing the interface between a drill bit and screw.
