Judge Scott Bain of Arlington, Virginia Draws on His Work as an Attorney for The Software and Information Industry Association

Arlington, Virginia, 27th August 2022, ZEXPRWIRE, Judge Scott Bain has acted as the author judge for over 50 cases in the past six years while serving on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), an administrative law body of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which decides issues of patentability. Judge Scott Bain has also acted as a panel judge in over 90 cases in the same time span. Prior to his work as a judge for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Scott Bain worked as the chief litigation counsel and the director of the Internet Anti-piracy Program of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), a trade association of U.S. software and digital publishing industries. In that position, he managed and conducted the litigation of the SIIA on behalf of the association and its member companies.

Judge Scott Bain often draws on his work as an attorney for the Software & Information Industry Association. While he worked at the SIIA, Judge Bain litigated a case in which the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that an individual reporting alleged software piracy to SIIA is entitled to remaining anonymous.  Bain commented on the case: “The appellate decision was an important vindication of the First Amendment speech rights of informants or whistleblowers. It helped ensure that those individuals reporting piracy to SIIA and other enforcement organizations could remain anonymous, which was critical for encouraging the socially beneficial act of reporting piracy or other alleged corporate misconduct. That decision set a solid First Amendment precedent that benefits SIIA, other associations, and publishers in D.C., and is a persuasive roadmap for other jurisdictions.”

That decision regarded the attempts of Solers Inc. to force SIIA to reveal the identity of an anonymous informant that had filed a report with SIIA accusing Solers Inc. of software piracy. When served with a subpoena, SIIA contested and explained that in the over twenty years of its anti-piracy program, it had never provided the identity of an informant wishing to remain anonymous. The appellate court agreed, upholding the First Amendment rights of an individual to engage in anonymous criticism. “This was not a public communication,” said Bain at the time. “Nobody would have ever heard anything about this if it wasn’t for their lawsuit.”

Judge Scott Bain also commented on the Bilski case decision rendered by the United States Supreme Court, while Bain was at SIIA:  “It was a rather uneventful opinion. The Supreme Court decided that single case on those facts, but didn’t give much guidance on how other cases will come out.” Bain said that patent lawyers would likely continue writing software patent applications as previously, and for companies and people holding software patents at that time it was good news.

About Judge Scott Bain

Judge Scott Bain has acted as the author judge for over 50 cases while serving on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), an administrative law body of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which decides issues of patentability. Judge Scott Bain has also acted as a panel judge in over 90 cases during this time. While working as an attorney, Judge Scott Bain, served as the chief litigation counsel and the director of the Internet Anti-piracy Program of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), a trade association of U.S. software and digital publishing industries. In that position, he managed and conducted the litigation of the SIIA on behalf of the association and its member companies. In previous positions, Mr. Bain was a partner at the firm of Wiley Rein LLP and the vice president of legal affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America. Mr. Bain has litigated a wide variety of intellectual property (IP) cases, including the patent case of NTP v Research in Motion, Ltd (the “blackberry case”), as well as the notable copyright case of “Lowry’s Reports, Inc v Legg Mason, Inc,” which yielded one of the largest statutory damage awards in history. Chairperson of the American Bar Association’s International Task Force on Piracy, he is coauthor of “Copyright Law in the Digital World: Basics, Law, and Policy” (2005) and many other IP publications. A former software engineer, Judge Scott Bain received his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California-Berkeley in 1997. Following law school, he clerked for Hon. Randall R. Rader of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.