Patents — attorney malpractice — jurisdiction

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U.S. Supreme Court

Civil

Patents — attorney malpractice — jurisdiction

28 U. S. C. 1338(a) does not deprive state courts of subject matter jurisdiction over attorney malpractice claims that depend on interpretation of federal patent law.

Minton’s argument founders, however, on Grable’s substantiality requirement. The substantiality inquiry looks to the importance of the issue to the federal system as a whole. Here, the federal issue does not carry the necessary significance. No matter how the state courts resolve the hypothetical “case within a case,” the real-world result of the prior federal patent litigation will not change. Nor will allowing state courts to resolve these cases undermine “the development of a uniform body of [patent] law.” Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U. S. 141. The federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over actual patent cases, and in resolving the nonhypothetical patent questions those cases present they are of course not bound by state precedents. Minton suggests that state courts’ answers to hypothetical patent questions can sometimes have real-world effect on other patents through issue preclusion, but even assuming that is true, such “fact-bound and situation-specific” effects are not sufficient to establish arising under jurisdiction, Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc. v. McVeigh, 547 U. S. 677. Finally, the federal courts’ greater familiarity with patent law is not enough, by itself, to trigger the federal courts’ exclusive patent jurisdiction.

355 S. W. 3d 634, reversed and remanded.

11-1118 Gunn v. Minton

Roberts, C.J.