The Court today holds that WesternGeco's award for lost profits was a permissible application of Section 284 of the Patent Act.
Put another way, federal law DOES allow a patent owner to recover for lost foreign profits in this scenario.
My money is on Carpenter.
This means that Alito probably has the Texas gerrymandering case, Abbott v. Perez, and Roberts probably has Trump v. Hawaii.
Gorsuch dissents, joined by Breyer(!).
We have the final decision, in Carpenter, per Roberts.
The Sixth Circuit's decision is reversed and remanded. It is a hefty one.
Court holds that the government's acquisition of Carpenter's cellphone records was a Fourth Amendment search.
Four separate dissents. That explains why this one took so long.
It's five-four, CJ plus Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg.
Court declines to extend Smith and Miller, involving what is known as the "third-party records doctrine" (which holds that you don't have a protected interest in information that you voluntarily share with someone else). "Given the unique nature of cellphone location information," the Court says, "the fact that the Government obtained the information form a third party does not overcome Carpenter's claim to Fourth Amendment protection."
The Court emphaizes that the decision is narrow. It is not weighing in on real-time cell-site records, and "does not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security."
Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan join the Roberts opinion.
Kennedy dissents, joined by Thomas and Alito. Thomas dissents, as does Alito, joined by Thomas. Gorsuch also dissents alone.
Alito dissent says that he shares the Court's "concern about the effect of new technology on personal privacy, but I fear that today's decision will do far more harm than good."
Alito predicts that the court's "reasoning fractures two fundamental pillars of Fourth Amendment law, and in doing so, it guarantees a blizzard of litigation while threatening many legitimate and valuable investigative practices."
Roberts is done; the marshal says the court will be back on Monday morning.
The justices are now in recess.
The Gorsuch opinion is interesting, pressing a property/ownership-based view of the Fourth Amendment as an alternative to the Katz reasonable person test. In Gorsuch's view, it's possible to have enough of an ownership interest in a thing, or in data, to assert a Fourth Amendment challenge--even if the thing or data is possessed by a third party. And notwithstanding his dissent, he says "It seems to me entirely possible a person’s cell-site data could qualify as his papers or effects under existing law." He dissents because he concludes that the argument has been forfeited in this case.
Thomas would have decided the case based on his view that the records in question are the property of the cell service providers. Because they are not the property of Carpenter, he says, Carpenter has no Fourth Amendment protection against their disclosure to the Government.
Okay, everyone, I'm going to shut down the live blog for today. We've got six more opinions still to come out next week, so we'll be here live-blogging.
On the blog today we'll have analyses of today's four decisions (plus Pereira v. Sessions from yesterday, which I'll publish in a moment). We'll have two more op-ed pieces as well on the administrative state, Mark Walsh with a "view" from the courtroom, and Steve Wermiel with "SCOTUS for law students."
Thank you for being with us this morning!
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