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An e-mail highlighting praise for an attorney's argument led to resignation.
US Circuit Judge Randall Rader, who was just weeks ago the top patent judge in the nation, has announced he will step down, following an admission that he made an ethical "lapse" when he sent an e-mail praising an attorney who appears frequently before his court.
....
On the thorniest issues of patent law, Rader often came down on the side of having an expansive view of the power of patents. In the fractured Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank case now being reconsidered by the Supreme Court, Rader wrote a full-throated defense of software patents.
This is a huge deal. This judge was one of the most outspoken advocates of software patents, and his decisions have contributed to the mess we're in, as far as the law concerning the various forms of intellectual property. The scandal and his resignation just highlights the inbred cronyism that is patent law in the US. When I was in law school, the issue surrounding software patents was settled. Software, outside some connection to an otherwise patentable device with some form of physicality, was not patentable. Computers were regarded as a complex form of a player-piano, and software, the paper tape rolls... We need to go back to that, if innovation is going to continue.
A lot of the CAFC decisions have been reviewed/overturned in the "normal" course of business... So, I don't think there's any special consideration in getting reviews of other decisions of his. It's (maybe) ironic that the Supreme Ct. is soon going to be releasing its opinion on yet another one of his appellate opinions (writing for the majority)... Maybe that had something to do with the timing here?!?! Hmmm??? I guess we can only speculate.
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