Comment: Patent Board, Braced for Worst, Emerges Relatively Unscathed by SCOTUS’s Jarkesy Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violated the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial by prosecuting securities fraud cases in-house. The Court’s decision did not address broader questions about the constitutionality of agency adjudications, sparing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from immediate upheaval, leaving the 2018 decision in Oil States Energy Services LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC, intact for the time being.

Sterne Kessler Director and co-chair of the firm’s appellate practice Will Milliken commented, however, that the Seventh Amendment analyses applied in Oil States and Jarkesy were very different, and so noted, “we may see arguments in the coming months that . . . Jarkesy calls Oil States into question.”