Order List — Four Grants; One CVSG
on Feb 28, 2005 at 10:13 am
Here is today’s Order List. The Court granted certiorari in four cases and asked for the SG’s views in another. Still no word on the four petitions challenging the constitutionality of the recess appointment of Judge Pryor.
The grants are:
No. 04-473, Garcetti v. Ceballos
No. 04-597, Unitherm Food Systems v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc. (limited to the question whether, and to what extent, a court of appeals may review the sufficiency of evidence supporting a civil jury verdict where the party requesting review made a motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure before submission of the case to the jury, but neither renewed that motion under Rule 50(b) after the jury’s verdict, nor moved for a new trial under Rule 59)
No. 04-631, Richards v. Priarie Band Potawatomi Nation
and
No. 04-712, Lincoln Proeprty Co. v. Roche.
The Court invited the Acting Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the United States in No. 04-607, Laboratory Corp. of America v. Metabolite Laboratories, on the following question: “RespondentÂ’s patent claims a method for detecting a form of vitamin B deficiency, which focuses upon a correlation in the human body between elevated levels of certain amino acids and deficient levels of vitamin B. The method consists of the following: First, measure the level of the relevant amino acids using any device, whether the device is, or is not, patented; second, notice whether the amino acid level is elevated and, if so, conclude that a vitamin B deficiency exists. Is the patent invalid because one cannot patent “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas”? Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 185 (1981).”
