What’s the Tea?: Understanding Court Precedent
In my “What’s the Tea?” series, I’m going to look closely at certain court cases to examine how intellectual property law is shaped by the courts over time. Very often, statutes are unclear, and they leave room for ambiguity. This can be a good thing, as it makes the law a bit more flexible as technology changes, but it makes coming up with a definite answer as to whether something is or isn’t legal complicated.
That’s where court precedent comes in. Lawyers and law students alike actually spend more time looking at court cases than at statutes. Both are important, of course, but the court cases interpret the statutes, and help us figure out how courts in the future are likely do so as well. The problem is, you can’t just go find any old court case and assume you’ll get pretty much the same outcome. Instead, you need to understand how the court structure works to know just how important a particular case is.
Since Intellectual Property law is mostly federal, we can ignore state courts for the moment. As you probably know, amongst the federal courts, the most important and final court is the Supreme Court. Under the Supreme Court are 13 Courts of Appeals, or “Circuit Courts.” And then, at the bottom of that structure, are District Courts, which are organized under the various Circuit Courts.
The District Courts have to follow decisions of law (so, how the statute is interpreted) made by the particular Circuit Court above them, but not necessarily the decisions of law made by one of the other Circuit Courts. So, if you have the District Court for the Northern District of Florida, it has to follow decisions of law made by the 11th Circuit Court, which is over it, but not necessarily those made by the 9th Circuit Court. This can lead to what we call a “circuit split” where one Circuit Court has interpreted a statute (or the Constitution) one way, and another has interpreted it another. Obviously, that can cause problems! So circuit splits are one reason why the Supreme Court might choose to hear a particular case.
The Supreme Court has the final say on decisions of all federal law. While the District and Circuit Courts don’t really get to pick and choose what cases they hear, the Supreme Court does. It doesn’t hear every case that someone tries to appeal to it…instead it hears cases that it feels need a more final ruling that applies across the board. When the US Supreme Court makes a ruling all the Circuit and District Courts are required to follow that ruling in other cases that have similar questions of law. That doesn’t mean that the outcome will always be the same, because the facts could be different enough to justify a new outcome, but how the law is applied? The lower courts are bound by Supreme Court decisions.
So, precedent is a decision of law, either by the same court or a higher court, that should be followed in later decisions with similar legal questions. Precedent has the most power when it’s from a higher court, especially the Supreme Court, but generally a District or Circuit Court should apply the law the same way to similar facts, so it matters even when it was just that same court. This is what is called stare decisis. Courts will, generally, adhere quite rigidly to their earlier decisions, even if they aren’t sure that prior decision was or is correct, because it gives greater certainty. There are instances where a Court may depart from their earlier decision, but those are rare and often frowned upon. If a Court does that, it will usually try very hard to distinguish the facts of the case in a way to avoid actually saying it’s overturning its earlier ruling.
As we move forward with this series, keep in mind how stare decisis and precedent work, and you’ll have a good sense of just how binding a particular case is. If it’s from the Supreme Court, you know that ALL the courts need to pay attention, but if it’s from a lower court it may depend on where a specific case is brought!
