The former chief judge at the District Court for the District of Delaware was elevated to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in February.
Since then, Len Stark – the only Federal Circuit member with trial judge experience and one of the few who previously worked as a patent litigator – has made some important contributions to US patent precedent.
Stark wrote the judgment for Thaler v Vidal in August, for example, in which he and his fellow circuit judges Kimberly Moore and Richard Taranto found that the Patent Act required an inventor to be a natural person.
The ruling disappointed plaintiff Stephen Thaler, the creator of DABUS, and others like him who’d hoped the US would allow artificial intelligence platforms to be listed as inventors on patents.
Stark continued to serve as a visiting judge in Delaware for the first half of the year, managing his leftover cases that were either on the eve of trials or would otherwise be unnecessarily disrupted if a new judge took over.
The woman Stark replaced at the Federal Circuit, Kathleen O’Malley, said the appeals court was in “good hands” with the Delaware judge.
So far, she seems to have been right.
