Jurisdictional Ping-Pong Averted

We've previously written about Chandler v. Phoenix Services, L.L.C., an interesting case on the Federal Circuit's exclusive appellate jurisdiction in patent cases. Earlier this week, the Fifth Circuit issued a decision marking the latest entry in that saga.

A quick recap of the relevant background: a Walker Process claim is an antitrust claim alleging enforcement of a fraudulently obtained patent. In an earlier case, Xitronix Corporation v. KLA-Tencor Corporation, the Federal Circuit and the Fifth Circuit disagreed about which court had appellate jurisdiction over Walker Process claims. The Federal Circuit held that the Walker Process claim there arose under antitrust law rather than patent law, and thus transferred the appeal to the Fifth Circuit. But the Fifth Circuit sent the appeal back to the Federal Circuit, reasoning that the Federal Circuit had exclusive jurisdiction because the antitrust claim depended in part on a patent-law issue—whether the