Petitions of the week

Issues:(1) Whether the Hobbs Act strips courts of jurisdiction to engage in a traditionalChevronanalysis and requires automatic deference to an agencys order even if there has been no challenge to the validity of such order; and (2) whether faxes that promote goods and services even at no cost must have a commercial nexus to a firms business to qualify as an advertisement under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, which permitted civil liability for sending unsolicited advertisements by fax; or whether a plain reading of the rules set forth by the Federal Communications Commission creates a per se rule that such faxes are automatically advertisements.

Issue:Whether the standard for determining the adequacy of the written description of the invention in a patent must be in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains . . . to make and use the same, as stated within the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. 112(a), or whether court-created standards should control instead.

Issues:(1) Whether, given the Supreme Courts holdings that the Federal Power Act pre-empts inconsistent state ratemaking and requires state agencies to treat cost allocations made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as reasonable, FERC may deny a refund authorized by FPA Section 206(b) based on the threat of a state regulatory commission to violate the supremacy clause by denying recovery of the surcharge needed to make the refund; and (2) whether – when FERC grants a refund for an unjust and unreasonable holding-company cost allocation, pursuant to its policy to grant refunds for unjust and unreasonable rates, and numerous holding-company refund decisions support the policy – a U.S. court of appeals may, without scrutiny, accept FERCs subsequent reversal of its refund decision based on its assertion that its previously cited policy never existed, and its reversal of key prior findings without explanation.