Pauline Newman

Pauline Newman (born June 20, 1927) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

She has been called "the heroine of the patent system", "the Federal Circuit's most prolific dissenter", and "the greatest ally to inventors with respect to [calling out] the ignorance of the CAFC, district courts, and at times even the Supreme Court".

Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore commented of Newman that "many of her dissents have later gone on to become the law—either the en banc law from our court or spoken on high from the Supremes".

Newman was born in New York City in 1927, to Maxwell H. and Rosella G. Newman.

Growing up during and in the aftermath of World War II, Newman "learned to fly planes, drive racecars and ride motorcycles".

She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College in 1947, with a double major in chemistry and philosophy, followed by a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1948.

She worked as a research scientist for American Cyanamid from 1951 to 1954, during which time she was issued patents for "colorful, dirt-resistant synthetic fabric she helped invent".

She "sought to be a physician, but changed her mind", receiving a Doctor of Philosophy in chemistry from Yale University in 1952.

At the time, it was unusual for women to work in the profession, and "no chemical firm would hire her except American Cyanamid".

As the sole female research scientist employed by the firm, "her bosses tried to force her into becoming a librarian until she threatened to walk out".

In 1954, she "took her savings and bought a ticket on a boat to Paris, where she supported herself by mixing drinks on the Île Saint-Louis" for six months, until her funds ran out.

Later in 1954, Newman returned to the United States and started working for FMC Corp., receiving a Bachelor of Laws from New York University School of Law in 1958, and working as a patent attorney and in-house counsel, and for fifteen years (1969–1984) as director of the Patent, Trademark and Licensing Department.

From 1961 to 1962 Newman also worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a science policy specialist in the Department of Natural Resources.

She served on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Intellectual Property from 1974 to 1984 and on the advisory committee to the Domestic Policy Review of Industrial Innovation from 1978 to 1979.

From 1982 to 1984, she was Special Adviser to the United States Delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on the Revision of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.

Over her career, Newman has received honors including the Wilbur Cross Medal of Yale University Graduate School, and the Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Cooperation from the Pacific Industrial Property Association.

In 1982, while serving on a presidential committee on industrial stagnation for President Ronald Reagan, Newman helped create the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

She has also been a "Distinguished Professor of Law" as an adjunct professor at the George Mason University School of Law.

On January 30, 1984, President Ronald Reagan nominated Newman to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated by Judge Philip Nichols Jr.., who had assumed senior status on October 1, 1983.

Newman was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 27, 1984, and received her commission the following day.

Newman thus became the first judge appointed directly to the Federal Circuit, all of her predecessors having come to the court through the merger of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the appellate division of the United States Court of Federal Claims.

Newman was also the only judge on the Federal Circuit who did not previously serve on a lower court.

Another judge of the Federal Circuit, Giles Rich, was the oldest active federal judge in the history of the United States when he died 10 days after his 95th birthday in 1999; Newman surpassed that record on June 30, 2022, but "remains an active judge" and has been described as "the court's institutional memory bank".

With respect to the court's federal contracts jurisprudence, in 2010 she wrote a dissenting opinion in M. Maropakis Carpentry, Inc. v. United States.

Stanfield Johnson has called her the court's "great dissenter", and has said that her dissents in the area of federal contracts "consistently reflect the view that a primary responsibility of the court is to serve 'the national policy of fairness to contractors'".

He writes:

In 2013, Newman was honored by NYU Law Women as their law alumna of the year.

In 2015, she endowed a lecture series on science, technology, and society, at her undergraduate alma mater, Vassar College, with the inaugural lecture being delivered on April 2, 2015, by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson.

That same year, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg praised Newman for inspiring women with "her intelligence, her diligence, her devotion to a very difficult area of the law".

A 2016 Law360 article stated that Newman "built her reputation as the appellate court's most prolific contrarian".

A 2017 analysis of the impact of Newman's dissents has shown that her positions are often adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal.

In 2018, she was selected to receive the American Inns of Court "Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Award for Professionalism and Ethics".

In October 2022, Newman endowed and initiated the Pauline Newman Program for Science, Technology and International Law, at NYU Law.

In remarks published in 2023, Federal Circuit Chief Judge Moore said that "there can be no doubt that Judge Newman is the heroine of the patent system".

In September 2023, Newman spoke at the National Vaccine Law Conference at George Washington University, advocating for greater consideration into the effect of patent law on the advancement of technologies like vaccines, stating, "we must understand not just how the present law applies, but also to understand if it's anything less than optimum, it's in our hands".

Newman has authored a number of important opinions setting forth the law of patents in the United States.

In Arrhythmia Research Technology, Inc. v. Corazonix Corp., she wrote an opinion for the panel finding that the use of an algorithm as a step in a process did not render the process unpatentable.

In In re Recreative Technologies Corp., she wrote the opinion finding that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences exceeded its authority when it considered a claim of obviousness in the reexamination of a patent previously held by the examiner not to be obvious with respect to the references cited.

In Intergraph Corporation v. Intel Corporation, she highlighted the right of a patent owner to refuse to license, even to a party that has become completely dependent on the patent.

In Jazz Photo Corp. v. United States International Trade Commission, she clarified the law of repair and reconstruction (permitting the owner of a patented item to fix the item when it breaks, but not to essentially build a new item from the parts of an old one), writing that it was not a patent infringement for one party to restore another party's patented "one-use" camera to be used a second time.