High Court Rejects Group's Anti-Disclosure Bid

In the wake of its Citizens United decision last spring which ushered in a flood of anonymous campaign dollars from corporations, unions and other independent groups, the Supreme Court has decided to pass on a conservative group's appeal to allow it to withhold information from the Federal Election Commission.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from the group SpeechNow.org, which wants to limit what it has to tell the FEC about its activities.

That leaves in place a federal appeals court decision that struck down limits on contributions to SpeechNow and similar independent groups, but upheld disclosure requirements.

The plaintiff said the FEC's reporting requirements for SpeechNow - similar to those for political action committees, or PACs - were "burdensome," and intrude upon their contributors' First Amendment rights of free association by revealing their identities and donations.

It argued that the court's Citizens United decision, which released corporations from the responsibility of disclosing campaign expenditures, should also apply to them.

The case was SpeechNow.org, et al., v. Federal Election Commission (08-5223).

SpeechNow's founder, David Keating, also heads the Club for Growth.

Critics says the Citizens United decision has allowed increased influence in the political process by anonymous donors, including corporations and foreign entities, without transparency or accountability.

Outside groups have so far spent more than $264 million in this midterm election cycle, more than four times as much as they did four years ago.

On Friday, business groups in Minnesota failed to win a high court injunction against a Minnesota law (enacted in the wake of Citizens United) which requires the disclosure of corporate political spending in state elections. That request for a stay came from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

Who Owns the Research?

The Supreme Court will decide whether patents on inventions that arise from federally-funded research must go to the university where the inventor worked.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Stanford University.

Stanford sued pharmacutical giant Roche over the alleged infringement of technology for detecting HIV levels in a patient's blood.

The university said it owns the technology because its discoverer worked at Stanford. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act allows universities to retain the rights to research funded by federal grants.

But Roche says Stanford researcher Mark Holodniy also signed a contract with it that give the company the patent to anything that resulted from their collaboration.

The case is Stanford University v. Roche, 09-1159.

Rejected

The court today also declined to hear dozens of other cases, including:

• An appeal by gaming company Anascape Ltd., whose $21 million judgment against Nintendo over patent infringement had been overturned by lower court. A federal jury had decided that Nintendo infringed on Anascape's existing patent of the technology used to make joysticks while designing its Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers.

• A challenge to the Patriot Act by Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who was wrongly identified and arrested by federal agents who claimed a fingerprint tied him to the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Mayfield eventually received an apology and $2 million from the federal government. But a federal appeals court blocked Mayfield's challenge to the Patriot Act.