Learning American Patent Law Through Court Decision Analysis

以判決分析方式來學習美國專利法

10.6284/NPUSTHSSR.2015.9(2)2

陳秉訓(Ping-Hsun Chen)

專利法 ； 法律寫作 ； 巡迴上訴法院 ； 專利英文 ； Patent law ； legal writing ； Federal Circuit ； Patent English

人文社會科學研究

9卷2期（2015 / 06 / 30）

20 - 36

英文

本文提供非受美國訓練的法律學生一種閱讀美國專利法判決的方法，特別針對臺灣學生所設計。美國法律寫作有其風格。如果沒有在美國法學院受過訓練，讀者很難完全掌握判決的內容。因此，有必要提出一個方法以幫助學生分析判決，而使他們能獲得美國專利法的知識。為展現本文所建議的方法，本文先介紹美國法律寫作和美國專利法等概念。接著，就閱讀策略，本文以五個方向討論並舉例佐證。本文所提的方法包括三個步驟。首先，以初步分析各段落第一個句子的方式來重新組織法院判決；其次，確認各段落的主題是關於事實、法律原則、或法律爭點分析；最後，總結法院所適用之法律原則與裁決內容。因為法院判決有特定的文章結構，確認法院所採用的法律原則並非難事，而法律適用時所採用的相關事實內容也能確認。這些相關資訊可做為讀者用來提供法律意見之用。

This article provides a method for non-American-trained law students to analyze American patent law cases. Particularly, the method is designed for Taiwanese students. The American legal writing has its own style. Without being trained in an American law school, a person cannot analyze the cases comprehensively. It is necessary to develop a method to help local students to analyze cases, so they can acquire the knowledge of American patent law. For elaborating the proposed method, this article begins with a background introduction about American legal writing and patent law. Then, five aspects of the proposed method are explained in details with examples. In the conclusion, a brief summary of the proposed method is provided. First, re-organize the court decision by briefly analyzing the first sentence of each paragraph. Second, identify whether a paragraph is about facts, legal doctrines, or legal issue analyses. Third, summarize the legal rules applied and rulings made. Because of the formality of the legal writing tradition in American, it is not difficult to identify the law applied by the court, and that the relevant facts supporting the rulings in a decision can also be identified, so that those facts in that decision could be useful for supplying a legal opinion under the facts provided by a client.

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