Joe Salazar v. AT&T Mobility LLC, et al.

The Constitution empowers Congress to incentivize innovation by granting inventors limited monopolies in exchange for the public disclosure of their inventions. U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, Cl. 8. A patent—and the accompanying right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the disclosed invention—is a form of private property. 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(1). The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment protects against uncompensated governmental takings of private property. U.S. Const. amend. V. Where the Federal Circuit Panel’s construction of petitioner’s patent claim was unforeseeable and unjustifiable under the circuit’s prior decisions, disrupting petitioner’s legitimate investment-backed expectations and rendering his and similarly situated patent owners’ patents worthless, does the Panel’s precedential opinion constitute a judicial taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause?