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Native American Tribe Can't Be a 'Sovereign' Shield During Patent Review, Says Court (arstechnica.com)
Cyrus Farivar writes via Ars Technica: In a unanimous decision, an appellate court has resoundingly rejected the legal claim that sovereign immunity, as argued by a Native American tribe, can act as a shield for a patent review process. On July 20, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found in a 3-0 decision that the inter partes review (IPR) process (a process that allows anyone to challenge a patent's validity at the United States Patent and Trademark Office) is closer to an "agency enforcement action" -- like a complaint brought by the FTC or the FCC -- than a regular lawsuit.
This case really began in September 2015. That was when Allergan, a pharma company, sued rival Mylan, claiming that Mylan's generics infringed on Allergan's dry eye treatment known as Restasis. Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe was initially filed in the Eastern District of Texas, known as a judicial region that is particularly friendly to entities that are often dubbed patent trolls. By 2016, Mylan initiated the IPR. But Allergan, in an attempt to stave it off, struck a strange deal, transferring ownership of the six Restasis-related patents to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, based in Upstate New York, near the Canadian border. As part of that deal, Allergan paid $13.75 million to the tribe, with a promise of $15 million in annual payments -- if the patents were upheld, that is. The Mohawk Tribe attempted to end the IPR, citing sovereign immunity, which was denied. The tribe struck at least one other similar deal with a firm known as SRC Labs, which sued Amazon and Microsoft.
This case really began in September 2015. That was when Allergan, a pharma company, sued rival Mylan, claiming that Mylan's generics infringed on Allergan's dry eye treatment known as Restasis. Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe was initially filed in the Eastern District of Texas, known as a judicial region that is particularly friendly to entities that are often dubbed patent trolls. By 2016, Mylan initiated the IPR. But Allergan, in an attempt to stave it off, struck a strange deal, transferring ownership of the six Restasis-related patents to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, based in Upstate New York, near the Canadian border. As part of that deal, Allergan paid $13.75 million to the tribe, with a promise of $15 million in annual payments -- if the patents were upheld, that is. The Mohawk Tribe attempted to end the IPR, citing sovereign immunity, which was denied. The tribe struck at least one other similar deal with a firm known as SRC Labs, which sued Amazon and Microsoft.
If you're interested in the relation between native american tribes and misuse of sovereign immunity, I can recommend The Whistler by John Grisham, a nice read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The summary is about as clear as mud, and the underlying story seems to be deliberate obfuscation
No one is telling them what to do. What they are saying is that their ownership of a patent is not enough grounds to stop review of said patent.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Court cases are often named by "X vs. Y" where X is the name of the plaintiff and Y the name of the defendant. In this case, it was shortened to solely "X" which is "Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe" in this case.
And yes, usually the quotation marks are omitted. See, for example, the article in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's actually one of the first links in the summary here:
Basically, we don't recognise your jurisdiction because we're a sovereign nation, so please fuck off.
The courts just told them it doesn't apply here.
The is a deeper legal framework at play here. Certain, not all, Native American nations are legal entities in their own right. They have sovereignty under U.S. law, typically recognized under treaties that were signed between these nations and the United States Federal government.
In this way they are more or less equivalent to the States themselves in their legal rights. So the States are not "allowing" Native Americans the skirt state laws, the members of particular Nations are not subject to them, particularly on lands owned by the tribes which are technically not within the boundaries of the states, but are sovereign nations. That's what "sovereign" means, power not legally curtailed by a higher political entity. They are, however bound by such Federal laws as are either articulated by treaty or accepted by both political entities.
Hence the federal court's authority to say their sovereign does not apply in this case.
Nobody was trying to get them to assimilate. They massacred them, then drove out the survivors to land nobody wanted. Then, when people wanted that land they drove them out again, sometimes forcing them to walk vast distances without adequate supplies - in massacres only slightly less destructive than the original ones.
Assimilation would have involved giving them legal property and civil rights that would be honored, rather than sovereign immunity via treaties which were universally discarded as soon as they became inconvenient to the U.S. business interests of the day.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The US government did try to force them to assimilate. They forcibly took children from their families and made them attend boarding schools that forbade the culture which they came from.
https://www.history.com/news/h...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...