Cite as: 508 U. S. 83 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
IV
The Federal Circuit's practice is therefore neither compelled by our cases nor supported by the "case or controversy" requirement of Article III. Of course, its practice might nevertheless be supported on other grounds. The courts of appeals have significant authority to fashion rules to govern their own procedures. See, e. g., Ortega-Rodriguez v. United States, 507 U. S. 234, 244, 246, 249-250 (1993); Thomas v. Arn, 474 U. S. 140, 146-148 (1985). Just as we have adhered to a practice of deciding cases on statutory rather than constitutional grounds when both alternatives are available, see, e. g., Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council, 485 U. S. 568, 575 (1988), there might be a sufficient reason always to address the infringement issue before passing on the patent's validity. If, for example, the validity issues were generally more difficult and time consuming to resolve, the interest in the efficient management of the court's docket might support such a rule.
Although it is often more difficult to determine whether a patent is valid than whether it has been infringed, there are even more important countervailing concerns. Perhaps the most important is the interest of the successful litigant in preserving the value of a declaratory judgment that, as Chief Judge Nies noted, "it obtained on a valid counterclaim at great effort and expense." 21 A company once charged with
21 967 F. 2d 1521, 1577 (CA Fed. 1992) (Nies, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). As she added in a footnote: "Nor should we be unmindful of the expense and effort of the district court. Judge Avern Cohn of the Eastern District of Michigan (the Vieau trial judge) stated, in a panel discussion at our most recent Judicial Conference: 'I took six months to write a JNOV, found the patent invalid and not infringed and was very proud of my work product. And when I read that court of appeals opinion and found that my finding of invalidity had been vacated, there was no case or controversy, I was in a state of shock for ten minutes.' Cohn, Remarks at the Patent Breakout Session of the Tenth Annual Judi-
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