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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Enablement Pendulum Swings Back, Sean B. Seymore
The Enablement Pendulum Swings Back, Sean B. Seymore
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Possibly in response to criticisms that the U.S. patent system affords too much legal protection to patent owners, the courts have begun to chip away at patent rights. Curiously enough, the Supreme Court has heard a relatively large number of patent cases over its last three terms, which suggests to several commentators and members of the patent bar that the Court is unhappy with the Federal Circuit's stewardship of the patent system and has, among other things, invited the court to rethink its approach to modulating patent rights. And it appears that the Federal Circuit has accepted the invitation. In …
Law's Complexity: A Primer, J.B. Ruhl
Law's Complexity: A Primer, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The legal system. It rolls easily off the tongues of lawyers like a single word - the legal system - as if we all know what it means. But what is the legal system? How does it behave? What are its boundaries? What is its input and output? How will it look in one year? In ten years? How should we use it to make change in some other aspect of social life? Why do answers to these questions make the legal system seem so complex? Would assembling a cogent, descriptively accurate theory of what makes the legal system complex …
Making Copyright Whole: A Principled Approach To Copyright Exceptions And Limitations, Daniel J. Gervais
Making Copyright Whole: A Principled Approach To Copyright Exceptions And Limitations, Daniel J. Gervais
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article suggests a path to develop a principled conceptualization for copyright of limitations and exceptions at the international level. The paper argues that, normatively, copyright has always sought to reflect a balance between protection and access. It demonstrates that this balance was present to the minds of the negotiators of the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and may have been somewhat overlooked in revisions of the Convention. It was ultimately replaced by a three-step test designed to restrict the ability of individual legislators to create limitations and exceptions. The article also considers the …
Heightened Enablement In The Unpredictable Arts, Sean B. Seymore
Heightened Enablement In The Unpredictable Arts, Sean B. Seymore
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A bedrock principle of patent law is that an applicant must sufficiently disclose the invention in exchange for the right to exclude. The essential facet of the disclosure requirement is enablement, which compels a patent applicant to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) how to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without undue experimentation. Enablement problems may arise when the applicant claims an invention broadly with a dearth of supporting data or examples. This is problematic in unpredictable fields like chemistry because a PHOSITA often needs a specific and detailed teaching in …