New Chief Judge For the CAFC

Judge Kimberly Moore has succeeded Judge Sharon Prost as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. IP Watchdog provides a short retrospective of her important opinions, along with some commentary. “Judge Moore Decides Not to Eat the Majority’s ‘Validity Goulash,’ is the heading for commentary about her dissent in a case titled American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, in which a panel invalidated claims covering a method for manufacturing propeller shafts. “The majority opinion parrots the Alice/Mayo two-part test,” wrote Moore, “but reduces it to a single inquiry: If the claims are directed to a law of nature (even if the court cannot articulate the precise law of nature) then the claims are ineligible and all evidence of non-conventionality will be disregarded or just plain ignored.” In another case, Judge Moore called on the court to overturn a previous ruling — In re McGinley — before the Supreme Court does it for them. “More than thirty years have passed since McGinley, and in that time both the McGinley decision and our reliance on it have been widely criticized,” she wrote.