I have a question.  I seriously do not know the answer so anyone who knows the answer or who has any guidance on this question, please post a comment.  An upcoming post (when I am able to access the required links) will make the genesis my question apparent.  Here goes:

On what legal basis can the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board designate some of its decisions “not citable as precedent”?

Instictively, this doesn’t seem feasible.  The basis of nearly all U.S. law is stare decisis and the notion that the law should be predictable and litigants should be able use prior decisions to evaluate and argue cases for themselves or their clients.  While state or federal decisions (at least at the appellate level) may be unpublished, they are nonetheless citable by litigants.  The same policy rationale behind litigation should be appplicable to federal ageny decisions, no?

Is there some element of agency law that I have forgetten since the bar exam (or that I was never taught) that carves out an exception from the legal principle of stare decisis that permits the TTAB to label certain decisions non-citable?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 1:50 am and is filed under Trademarks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.