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The Federal Circuit, and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals before it, generally reviewed decisions by the Patent and Trademark Office under the same standard applied to district court decisions, whether the factual basis for the decision was "clearly erroneous" (questions of law were, and are, decided de novo), acting as a check on the administrative agency's interpretations of its precedent and Congress's statutory mandates. That changed when the Supreme Court decided, in Dickinson v....
By: McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP