Here is one of my favorite things (TAAFOMFT): a client wins a case on two separate grounds and the adversary appeals both grounds. The Court of Appeals remands the case as to one of the two grounds and refuses to consider the other ground, which, by itself, might dispose of the case. To do otherwise, the Court of Appeals, says, would be “assuming hypothetical jurisdiction.”
As Twin Cities IP lawyer, Paul Godfread, says, “I understand the logic, but it sounds a bit like jurisprudential ‘Simon Says.'”
This echoes an earlier TAAFOMFT in which I lament the scenario where two parties hammer out a deal only to have the court withhold its blessing on the truce.
No doubt the adversaries in the Syngenta Seeds v. Bunge North America case might have appreciated a definitive ruling on the case by the Eighth Circuit. But it was not to be…