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Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982 to bring greater uniformity to the country's patent laws.'Drawing on this purpose, the Federal Circuit has expanded this call for uniformity by also emphasizing the need for predictability and certainty in the law. The court thus has articulated fairly formalistic approaches to a number of issues. The use of bright-line rules, however, is often at the cost of fairness. In the area of property law, Professor Carol Rose highlighted this tension, and noted the historical, pendulum-like shifts between clear, hard-edged," crystal" rules and uncertain" muddy" rules that afford greater fairness. 2 Professor Chisum identified this same tension in patent law in his important piece, published in this journal in 1998, coining the phrase" the Fair Protection-Certainty Conundrum."