What Makes Federal Circuit Opinions Influential?

This Article provides the results of an empirical study assessing the determinants of a patent opinion’s influence at the Federal Circuit. I draw on a novel, largely hand-coded dataset of nearly 2,700 decisions issued by the Federal Circuit over a period of more than seven years. I find that some judges are more likely than others to issue binding opinions favoring patent owners (and others favoring patent challengers). In addition, drawing on case citation counts, I find limited evidence that extremely pro-patentee panels tend to write slightly more influential pro-patentee precedential decisions.

Perhaps most striking and surprising, however, is how similarly mixed panels (i.e., panels with at least one pro-patentee judge and at least one pro-challenger judge) decide cases. The results thus support that there’s a moderating impact from having a diversity of viewpoints on a panel. The results also have implications for both the general literature on citation analysis and for assessing the success of the Federal Circuit experiment, including the costs and benefits of vesting so much power in a single court.