Mikele Bicolli
Apr 19, 2022

Bryan F. Moore Named Administrative Law Judge At U.S. International Trade Commission

ITC Administrative Law Judge Sandra "Dee" Lord that was appointed in 2013, already retired in early April. Soon after that, a job vacancy was posted at usajobs.gov where the applicants were required to have at least 10 years of experience either as an administrative law judge from other agencies, a judge at the PTAB, attorney litigating IP practice, or a clerk from the courts that handle IP litigation. It was pretty clear that this time the ITC is looking for a person with a lot of experience in IP since the ITC judges spend quite a lot of time with the Section 337 investigations. It seems that the previous policy of ITC that wanted to hire only judges that had worked previously as AJL at other agencies has changed. Due to this policy many judges with little IP experience were hired and although they have done a fine job, still hiring people coming with an IP background has a lot of advantages.
Just yesterday, it was announced in the ITC website that Brian F. Moore was named as the sixth ALJ effective as of May 9th, 2022. He comes from a ten-year long career as Administrative Patent Judge at USPTO and even before that he has worked another six years as investigative attorney at the ITC’s Office of Unfair Import Investigations. It seems like this move will boost things further at the ITC and is an adequate response to the increasing number of Section 337 investigations.