Cite as: 527 U. S. 150 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
ened standard, and indeed more than even a bare preponderance of evidence in their favor. Existence of the additional requirement must be clear. This is suggested both by the phrase "recognized by law" and by the congressional specification in the APA that "[n]o subsequent legislation shall be held to supersede or modify the provisions of this Act except to the extent that such legislation shall do so expressly." § 12, 60 Stat. 244, 5 U. S. C. § 559. A statutory intent that legislative departure from the norm must be clear suggests a need for similar clarity in respect to grandfathered common-law variations. The APA was meant to bring uniformity to a field full of variation and diversity. It would frustrate that purpose to permit divergence on the basis of a requirement "recognized" only as ambiguous. In any event, we have examined the 89 cases which, according to respondents and supporting amici, embody the pre-APA standard of review. See App. to Brief for New York Intellectual Property Law Association as Amicus Curiae 1a-6a (collecting cases), and we conclude that those cases do not reflect a well-established stricter court/court standard of judicial review for PTO factfinding, which circumstance fatally undermines the Federal Circuit's conclusion.
The 89 pre-APA cases all involve CCPA review of a PTO administrative decision, which either denied a patent or awarded priority to one of several competing applicants. See 35 U. S. C. § 59a (1934 ed.) (granting CCPA review authority over PTO decisions); 35 U. S. C. § 141 (current grant of review authority to the Federal Circuit). The major consideration that favors the Federal Circuit's view consists of the fact that 23 of the cases use words such as "clear case of error" or "clearly wrong" to describe the CCPA's review standard, while the remainder use words such as "manifest error," which might be thought to mean the same thing. See App. to Brief for New York Intellectual Property Law Association as Amicus Curiae 1a-6a. When the CCPA decided many of these cases during the 1930's and early 1940's,
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