Pauline Newman
Pauline Newman is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Newman received a B.A. from Vassar College in 1947, an M.A. from Columbia University in 1948, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University in 1952 and an LL.B. from New York University School of Law in 1958. She worked as a research scientist for American Cyanamid Co. from 1951 to 1954. From 1954 to 1984, Newman worked for FMC Corp., for fifteen years (1954-1969) as as a patent attorney and in-house counsel, and for another 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 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.
Newman was appointed to the Federal Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Jurisprudence
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.,[1] 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.,[2] 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 Jazz Photo Corp. v. United States International Trade Commission,[3] 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.