Steve Stites

Carla,

Where have you been? I haven't seen your byline since you left Linux Today?

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Steve Stites

Any American Federal court will accept an amicus curiae. Each court has a set of rules which vary a little from court to court. As far as I know every Federal court requires you to get the court's permission to submit an amicus curiae.

I submitted an amicus curiae in the Alice v CLS case. Alice went through a district court. Then it was appealed to a 3 judge panel of the Federal Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit. Then it was appealed to an en banc (10 judges) hearing of the Federal Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit. The chief judge, Judge Rader, said that anyone could submit an amicus curiae to the en banc hearing. So I wrote an amicus curiae and submitted it pro se. That cost me $200 out of pocket including 2 subway rides to downtown D.C.

Then Alice v CLS was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rule 11 says that you have to be an experienced lawyer to submit an amicus curiae to the Supreme Court so I did not submit an amicus curiae. But the open source position was well presented to the Supreme Court with an amicus curiae submitted by Eben Moglen.

You are right about not knowing which cases are relevant. Practically, you will probably know what cases are worth submitting amicus curiae when cases are appealed.

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Steve Stites