[btilly]

I see both sides of this somewhat pointless argument.

The core issue is this. You are probably not a lawyer. Thus "rubber stamp for a vested interest" is enough to qualify two courts as being very much like each other.

By contrast rayiner IS a lawyer. (And one who is well-known on this site.) To a lawyer the key characteristics of a court are what it has jurisdiction over, and who its precedence binds. Because that is what matters in litigation. On these measures, the two courts are about as unlike as it is possible to be. FISC binds itself only. By contrast CAFC binds every court in the country that can hear a patent case except the Supreme Court.

I believe that this whole argument could have been avoided if you had realized that he was fundamentally right about the precedence issue (which he is), and limited yourself to the similarity of both being rubber stamps.

[bobwaycott]

Ah, but what is frustrating is that I DID limit myself to the similarity of both being rubber stamps only (albeit, sadly, in my followup, not original, comment where I tried to be explicit about my intended meaning). I even attempted to give a passing remark on that precedent issue, but only insofar as it was precedent within FISC, not any other courts (by mentioning in my first remark on the precedence issue that nobody I know of has cited FISC decisions in non-FISC cases/actions). I reiterated that limitation how many times?

The core issue is not that I am not a lawyer (although I am not; academics were political theory; ditched law/grad school route for programming). It is, rather, that I used "operates very much like" in a way that would spur a lawyer to step in and want to quibble over words, without pausing to reflect on the context in which the "operates very much like" was made. The primary fault is mine for being vague and leaving such a wide-ranging statement open to too much misinterpretation.

That rayiner made his first statement was understandable, and is why I offered the followup explanation. That we continued to further spiral around issues of precedence, which I understand, and with which I was not disagreeing, left me wondering what was going on. Had I suggested that FISC decisions bind other courts, I could completely understand. But I did not. Because it was rayiner commenting, who I know well from his otherwise very sensible comments here, left me wondering if he was trolling me for fun or something.

Anyway, this has hit the level of absurd for me. I'll back out because I respect and upvote all three of your guys' statements on the regular (you, rayiner, & tptacek), and I had zero expectation and no remaining interest in arguing over a stupid jab I shouldn't have made in a thread about a court decision.

Thanks for feedback.