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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee
The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee
Peter Lee
Although tensions between universality and exceptionalism apply throughout law, they are particularly pronounced in patent law, a field that deals with highly technical subject matter. This Article explores these tensions by investigating an underappreciated descriptive theory of Supreme Court patent jurisprudence. Significantly extending previous scholarship, it argues that the Court’s recent decisions reflect a project of eliminating “patent exceptionalism” and assimilating patent doctrine to general legal principles (or, more precisely, to what the Court frames as general legal principles). Among other motivations, this trend responds to rather exceptional patent doctrine emanating from the Federal Circuit in areas as varied as …
E-Obviousness, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.
E-Obviousness, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.
Glynn Lunney
As patents expand into e-commerce and methods of doing business more generally, both the uncertainty and the risk of unjustified market power that the present approach generates suggest a need to rethink our approach to nonobviousness. If courts fail to enforce the nonobviousness requirement and allow an individual to obtain a patent for simply implementing existing methods of doing business through a computer, even where only trivial technical difficulties are presented, entire e-markets might be handed over to patent holders with no concomitant public benefit. If courts attempt to enforce the nonobviousness requirement, but leave undefined the extent of the …
Patent Misuse And Antitrust: Rebirth Or False Dawn?, Daryl Lim
Patent Misuse And Antitrust: Rebirth Or False Dawn?, Daryl Lim
Daryl Lim
This Article examines how two recent cases, F.T.C. v. Actavis and Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises Inc. could affect both the equitable defense of patent misuse and the patent-antitrust interface more generally. It begins by tracing the history of patent misuse and its reformulation into an “antitrust-lite” doctrine by the Federal Circuit. This Article presents new empirical data confirming this reformulation, and unveils the surprising influence of the Seventh Circuit and the Chicago School on that reformulation. The Article then explores Actavis and Kimble. It explains why Actavis will catalyze more antitrust challenges when patent rights are exercised, and why it …
Frand V. Compulsory Licensing: The Lesser Of The Two Evils, Srividhya Ragavan
Frand V. Compulsory Licensing: The Lesser Of The Two Evils, Srividhya Ragavan
Srividhya Ragavan
No abstract provided.