Cite as: 527 U. S. 150 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
ference is a subtle one—so fine that (apart from the present case) we have failed to uncover a single instance in which a reviewing court conceded that use of one standard rather than the other would in fact have produced a different outcome. Cf. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. NLRB, 448 F. 2d 1127, 1142 (CADC 1971) (Leventhal, J., dissenting) (wrongly believing—and correcting himself—that he had found the "case dreamed of by law school professors" where the agency's findings, though "clearly erroneous," were "nevertheless" supported by "substantial evidence").
The difficulty of finding such a case may in part reflect the basic similarity of the reviewing task, which requires judges to apply logic and experience to an evidentiary record, whether that record was made in a court or by an agency. It may in part reflect the difficulty of attempting to capture in a form of words intangible factors such as judicial confidence in the fairness of the factfinding process. Universal Camera, supra, at 489; Jaffe, Judicial Review: "Substantial Evidence on the Whole Record," 64 Harv. L. Rev. 1233, 1245 (1951). It may in part reflect the comparatively greater importance of case-specific factors, such as a finding's dependence upon agency expertise or the presence of internal agency review, which factors will often prove more influential in respect to outcome than will the applicable standard of review.
These features of review underline the importance of the fact that, when a Federal Circuit judge reviews PTO fact-finding, he or she often will examine that finding through the lens of patent-related experience—and properly so, for the Federal Circuit is a specialized court. That comparative expertise, by enabling the Circuit better to understand the basis for the PTO's finding of fact, may play a more important role in assuring proper review than would a theoretically somewhat stricter standard.
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