 The Economics of a Centralized Judiciary: Uniformity, Forum Shopping, and the Federal CircuitScott Atkinson, Alan Marco () and John Turner () Journal of Law and Economics, 2009, vol. 52, issue 3, 411-443 Abstract: In 1982, the U.S. Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) as the sole appellate court for patent cases. This court was created ostensibly to eliminate inconsistencies in the application and interpretation of patent law across federal courts and thereby mitigate the incentives of patentees and alleged infringers to forum shop for a preferred venue. We perform the first econometric study of the extent of nonuniformity and forum shopping in the pre-CAFC era and of the CAFC's impact on these phenomena. We find that in patentee-plaintiff cases the pre-CAFC era was indeed characterized by significant nonuniformity in patent validity rates across circuits and by forum shopping on the basis of validity rates. We find weak evidence that the CAFC has increased uniformity of validity rates and strong evidence that forum shopping on the basis of validity rates ceased several years prior to the CAFC's establishment. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Date: 2009 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:v:52:y:2009:i:3:p:411-443 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.