Professional Positioners, Inc. v. T. P. Laboratories, Inc.

Background

Professional Positioners, Inc., a patent holder, asked permission to file one combined appendix that included the patent and the lower courts’ opinions on larger paper. The Court has a rule (Rule 33.1(d)) requiring appendices to be reproduced at a set paper size and bound so text is not obscured. Some patent documents could not meet the usual paper-size rule without breaching other formatting requirements, so the petitioner sought an exception and moved to have the Clerk file the nonconforming appendix.

Reasoning

The short outcome recorded here is that the Court denied the motion to direct the Clerk to file the noncompliant appendix. The published pages do not include a majority opinion explaining the Court’s full reasoning. Justice O’Connor is noted as willing to grant the motion, but the Court as a whole refused the requested exception and declined to allow the single larger appendix to be filed.

Real world impact

As a practical matter, the decision keeps the Court’s strict appendix-size and formatting requirements in force for this filing. The patent company will need to prepare separate or fully compliant appendices or otherwise conform to the rule, which the dissent described as potentially clumsy and costly. Because this ruling is a narrow procedural decision on one filing request, it does not resolve broader patent law disputes and could be revisited in future motions.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Blackmun, dissented. He argued that patent cases sometimes require larger paper and that courts should have discretion to grant sensible exceptions that save time and expense. He would have granted the petitioner’s motion for a single larger appendix.