摘要：In 2006, the Federal Circuit decided only one portion of one patent case en banc, and that was done mainly as a procedural matter (the entire case was not argued to an en banc court) in order to reconcile prior conflicting precedent on the issue of induced patent infringement with the recent Supreme Court decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., involving induced copyright infringement. But in light of the Supreme Court’s much more muscular review of the Federal Circuit’s patent cases—which may not even reflect the full extent of the Court’s interest in the Federal Circuit’s patent decisions—the relative paucity of en banc decisions in 2006 is understandable, and in many ways irrelevant to gaining a better understanding of the Federal Circuit’s patent law jurisprudence. In the pages that follow, we will address these and many other developments reflected in the Federal Circuit’s patent jurisprudence of 2006. And, as we did in our article surveying the Federal Circuit’s year 2000 jurisprudence, we again conclude with an addendum that discusses the statistical output of the Federal Circuit and its judges.
