Cite as: 508 U. S. 83 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
There are two independent bases for this conclusion. First, the Federal Circuit is not a court of last resort. If that court had jurisdiction while the case was pending before it, the case remains alive (barring other changes) when it comes to us. The Federal Circuit's determination that the patents were not infringed is subject to review in this Court, and if we reverse that determination, we are not prevented from considering the question of validity merely because a lower court thought it superfluous. As a matter of practice, the possibility that we would grant certiorari simply to review that court's resolution of an infringement issue is extremely remote, but as a matter of law we could do so, and if we did, we could also reach the declaratory judgment, as long as the parties continued to dispute the issue of validity, as they do here.19 As this case demonstrates, nothing prevents us, as a jurisdictional matter, from reviewing the Federal Circuit's disposition (even its vacatur) of the District Court's resolution of the declaratory judgment counterclaim.
19 Commenting on Electrical Fittings, in Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, 445 U. S. 326, 335 (1980), we wrote: "Although the Court limited the appellate function to reformation of the decree, the holding relevant to the instant case was that the federal courts retained jurisdiction over the controversy notwithstanding the District Court's entry of judgment in favor of petitioners. This Court had the question of mootness before it, yet because policy considerations permitted an appeal from the District Court's final judgment and because petitioners alleged a stake in the outcome, the case was still live and dismissal was not required by Art. III. The Court perceived the distinction between the definitive mootness of a case or controversy, which ousts the jurisdiction of the federal courts and requires dismissal of the case, and a judgment in favor of a party at an intermediate stage of litigation, which does not in all cases terminate the right to appeal." See also 959 F. 2d, at 953 (Lourie, J., concurring) ("[B]e-cause this court is not a court of last resort, a holding of either invalidity or noninfringement by our court does not render the case moot because it is not over. Therefore, when both infringement and validity issues are presented on appeal, we can base our affirmance on both grounds, thereby leaving a complete judgment available for review by the Supreme Court").
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