Digital Commons Network^™

Frand V. Compulsory Licensing: The Lesser Of The Two Evils, Srividhya Ragavan, Brendan Murphy, Raj Davé

Duke Law & Technology Review

This paper focuses on two types of licenses that can best be described as outliers—FRAND and compulsory licenses. Overall, these two specific forms of licenses share the objective of producing a fair and reasonable license of a technology protected by intellectual property. The comparable objective notwithstanding, each type of license achieves this end using different mechanisms. The FRAND license emphasizes providing the licensee with reasonable terms, e.g., by preventing a standard patent holder from extracting unreasonably high royalty rates. By contrast, compulsory licenses emphasize the public benefit that flows from enabling access to an otherwise inaccessible invention. Ultimately, both forms …

Noriega V. Activision/Blizzard: The First Amendment Right To Use A Historical Figure's Likeness In Video Games, Joshua Sinclair

Duke Law & Technology Review

Panama’s former dictator, Manuel Noriega, recently sued Activision Blizzard in the California Superior Court for using his likeness and image in the popular video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.” In his complaint, Noriega alleged that the use of his likeness violated his right of publicity. Former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, came to Activision’s defense, and filed a motion to dismiss, which was granted. In granting Activision’s motion, the court held that Activision’s use of Noriega’s likeness was transformative and did not violate his right of publicity. This Issue Brief argues that the California Superior Court should not …

The Ftc Has A Dog In The Patent Monopoly Fight: Will Antitrust’S Bite Kill Generic Challenges?, Jennifer D. Cieluch

Duke Law & Technology Review

Antitrust laws have been notoriously lenient in the patent realm, the underlying reason being that patents’ grant of exclusion create monopolies that defy antitrust laws in order to incentivize innovation. Thus, antitrust violations have rarely been found in the patent cases. But after the Supreme Court’s holding in FTC v. Actavis, brand name pharmaceutical companies may need to be more cautious when settling Hatch-Waxman litigation with potential patent infringers. Both brand-name drug manufacturers and generic drug manufacturers have incentives to settle cases by having the brand-name pay the generic in exchange for delaying their entry into the market. While courts …

Understanding The Backlog Problems Associated With Requests For Continued Examination Practice, Sean Tu

Duke Law & Technology Review

One of the greatest problems facing the current patent administration is a long patent pendency period. This study focuses on Request for Continued Examination (RCE) practice, and its effects on the current patent application backlog problem. RCEs are used to continue prosecution after a patent examiner has issued a final rejection. However, now that RCEs are placed on an examiner’s special docket, some examiners may pick up prosecution one to two years after the last action. Accordingly, there are great inefficiencies that may be created by this delay, such as relearning issues and questions from the previous action, diminished value …

Pleading Patents: Predicting The Outcome Of Statutorily Heightening Pleading Standards, Arjun Rangarajan

Duke Law & Technology Review

The tension between an extremely barebones Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Form 18 for patent infringement lawsuits and Supreme Court case law through Twombly and Iqbal has made it difficult for courts to dismiss frivolous patent litigation at the complaint stage. In this article, I look at the Federal Circuit’s treatment of Twombly and Iqbal, empirically evaluate 12(b)(6) motions from various district courts, and summarize local patent rules from the Eastern District of Texas. I conclude that the biggest likely impact of statutorily heightening and defining patent pleading standards through the proposed Innovation Act would be to provide much-needed uniformity …

The Case For Capsl: Architectural Solutions To Licensing And Distribution In Emerging Music Markets, Cody Duncan

Duke Law & Technology Review

Compulsory licensing in music has paved the way for a limited class of new noninteractive services. However, innovation and competition are stifled in the field of interactive or otherwise novel services due to high transaction costs inherent in direct licensing. While the creation of a new compulsory license available to a wider array of services may facilitate growth and diversity in new markets, it is unlikely that the legislative process can deliver a new compulsory regime in time to serve relevant interests. Furthermore, the risk exists that legislation written in response to contemporary technology will likely fail to recognize the …

What's It Worth To Keep A Secret?, Gavin C. Reid, Nicola Searle, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Duke Law & Technology Review

This article is the first major study of protection and valuation of trade secrets under federal criminal law. Trade secrecy is more important than ever as an economic complement and substitute for other intellectual property protections, particularly patents. Accordingly, U.S. public policy correctly places a growing emphasis on characterizing the scope of trade secrets, creating incentives for their productive use, and imposing penalties for their theft. Yet amid this complex ecosystem of legal doctrine, economic policy, commercial strategy, and enforcement, there is little research or consensus on how to assign value to trade secrets. One reason for this gap is …

The Death Of Fair Use In Cyberspace: Youtube And The Problem With Content Id, Taylor B. Bartholomew

Duke Law & Technology Review

YouTube has grown exponentially over the past several years. With that growth came unprecedented levels of copyright infringement by uploaders on the site, forcing YouTube’s parent company, Google Inc., to introduce a new technology known as Content ID. This tool allows YouTube to automatically scan and identify potential cases of copyright infringement on an unparalleled scale. However, Content ID is overbroad in its identification of copyright infringement, often singling out legitimate uses of content. Every potential case of copyright infringement identified by Content ID triggers an automatic copyright claim on behalf of the copyright holder on YouTube and subsequently freezes …

When Biopharma Meets Software: Bioinformatics At The Patent Office, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have spilled much ink questioning patent quality. Complaints encompass concern about incoming applications, examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), and the USPTO’s ultimate output. The literature and some empirical data also suggest, however, that applications, examination, and output may differ considerably based on technology. Most notably, although definitions of patent quality are contested, quality in the biopharmaceutical industry is often considered substantially higher than that in information and communications technology (ICT) industries.

This Article presents the first empirical examination of what happens when the two fields are combined. Specifically, it analyzes the creation and early history …

Mapping The Interface Between Human Rights And Intellectual Property, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pharmaceutical Patents And The Human Right To Health The Contested Evolution Of The Transnational Legal Order On Access To Medicines, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

Disputes over the regulation of access to medicines are occurring in multiple transnational, national, and local venues. Competing groups of states and non-state actors shift horizontally and vertically among these forums in an effort to develop competing legal rules over the propriety of granting intellectual property (IP) protection to newly developed life-saving drugs. This chapter applies the framework of Transnational Legal Orders (Terence C. Halliday & Gregory Shaffer, eds. 2015) to explain the origins of these controversies and their consequences. The chapter argues that the current state of affairs arose from a clash between two previously discrete TLOs—one relating to …

Patent Confusion, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Professors Peter S. Menell, J. Jonas Anderson, And Arti K. Rai As Amici Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, J. Jonas Anderson, Peter S. Menell, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office Grant Too Many Bad Patents?: Evidence From A Quasi-Experiment, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

Many believe the root cause of the patent system’s dysfunction is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or Agency) is issuing too many invalid patents that unnecessarily drain consumer welfare. Concerns regarding the Agency’s overgranting tendencies have recently spurred the Supreme Court to take a renewed interest in substantive patent law and have driven Congress to enact the first major patent reform act in over sixty years. Policymakers, however, have been modifying the system in an effort to increase patent quality in the dark. As there exists little to no compelling empirical evidence the PTO is actually overgranting …

Open Legal Educational Materials: The Frequently Asked Questions, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

There has been considerable discussion in academic circles about the possibility of moving toward open educational materials—those which may be shared, copied and altered freely, without permission or fee. Legal education is particularly ripe for such a transition, as many of the source materials—including federal statutes and cases—are in the public domain. In this article, we discuss our experience producing an open casebook and statutory supplement on Intellectual Property Law, and answer many of the frequently asked questions about the project. Obviously, open coursebooks are less expensive and more convenient for students. But we found that they also offer pedagogical …