RJLF Lawyers Examine the Federal Circuit's Focus on Adjudicative Access And Review in Law360
RJLF attorneys Philip Eklem and Amit Dhillon Sandhu authored the article, “Fed. Circ. Rulings Emphasize Adjudicative Access And Review” in Law360 examining a recurring theme across the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's 2026 docket: before the court will reach the merits of a dispute, it first asks whether the case belongs before it at all.
While most commentary on the Federal Circuit tracks substantive doctrine, claim construction, obviousness, PTAB practice, trade disputes, veterans law, and federal employment issues, Phil and Amit argue that an equally important story is unfolding beneath the surface. Across a wide range of appeals arising from entirely different tribunals and statutory schemes, the court has repeatedly confronted threshold questions of standing, jurisdiction, reviewability, finality, and adjudicative authority before ever addressing the underlying substantive dispute. As they put it, “The strongest merits argument in the world offers little value if the dispute never clears the threshold barriers to judicial review.”
Among the article's key findings:
In Hafeman v. Google LLC, the Federal Circuit looked past the patent owner's framing of its challenge and found it effectively attacked a PTAB institution decision — which is unreviewable under 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) — rejecting the appeal at the threshold.
In Intellectual Pixels Ltd. v. Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, the court reaffirmed that Article III courts “review judgments, not opinions,” holding that the PTAB acted within the scope of its authority on remand.
In International Rights Advocates v. Mullin, the court never reached allegations involving forced child labor in imports because the plaintiff organization failed to establish the concrete injury required for Article III standing.
Across Conklin v. Merit Systems Protection Board, A.L.M. Holding Co. v. Zydex Industries Private Ltd., IronSource Ltd. v. Digital Turbine Inc., Jacobson v. U.S., and Stiles v. Collins, jurisdictional limits, standing deficiencies, statutory review bars, and a lack of finality each proved dispositive without the court reaching the merits.
The authors conclude that threshold doctrines are no longer mere preliminaries: practitioners should treat standing, jurisdiction, reviewability, and finality as strategic priorities, since a compelling merits case cannot overcome deficiencies in access to judicial review.
Taken together, Phil and Amit contend that these decisions reveal a unified and increasingly significant body of procedural jurisprudence spanning the Federal Circuit's diverse jurisdiction — one that practitioners in any specialty would be well served to watch closely, since, in their words, “the merits do not matter if the court never gets there.”
Read the full article here or on Law360.com (subscription required).