Law Commons^™

Saving Trade Secret Disclosures On The Internet Through Sequential Preservation, Elizabeth A. Rowe

ExpressO

When a trade secret is stolen from its owner and posted on the Internet, the default rule is that it becomes a free for all. By virtue of the fact that it has been posted, it becomes public, and consequently loses its trade secret protection. The ensuing result is that independent third parties, including competitors, are entitled to use it, and the trade secret owner, despite years of laudable efforts to maintain the secret, suffers a fatal loss at the hands of a wrongdoer. The apparent injustice in that conclusion does not go unnoticed.

Given that trade secret law is …

Law And The Science Of Networks: An Overview And An Application To The "Patent Explosion", Katherine J. Strandburg

ExpressO

The network may be the metaphor of the present era. A network, consisting of “nodes” and “links,” may be a group of individuals linked by friendship; a group of computers linked by network cables; a system of roads or airline flights -- or another of a virtually limitless variety of systems of connected “things.” The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in “network science,” which seeks to move beyond metaphor to analysis in fields from physics to sociology. Network science highlights the role of relationship patterns in determining collective behavior. It underscores and begins to address the …

Risk Aversion And Rights Accretion In Intellectual Property Law, James Gibson

ExpressO

Intellectual property’s road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because liability is difficult to predict, intellectual property users often seek licenses even when proceeding without one might be permissible. Yet because the existence (vel non) of licensing markets plays a key role in determining the breadth of rights, these seemingly sensible licensing decisions eventually feed back into doctrine; the licensing itself becomes proof that the entitlement covers the use. Over time, then, public privilege recedes and rights expand, moving intellectual property’s ubiquitous gray areas into what used to be virgin territory--where risk aversion again creates licensing markets, which cause …

The (Intellectual Property Law &) Economics Of Innocent Fraud: The Ip & Development Debate, Peter Matthew Beattie

ExpressO

This note/essay examines the evidence on the effect of stronger IP laws introduced during the process of international IP law harmonization initiated by the TRIPS agreement, on the economic development of developing countries. It has been argued by proponents of harmonization that stronger IP laws will provide a needed boost to the economic development of developing (and even least-developed) countries. Critics of harmonization have argued that stronger IP laws will have the opposite effect. What has been largely overlooked in this debate is the strength of the evidentiary foundation upon which the arguments of both sides depend. Many of the …

Does Information Beget Information?, Dennis S. Karjala

ExpressO

Professor R. Polk Wagner has recently propounded a theory in the Columbia Law Review, purportedly based on a mathematical model, showing that open information grows exponentially with time and that, to the extent that creator control and incentives are correlated, greater control in the creator (author or inventor) results in a larger supply of open information in the long run than less control. While Professor Wagner’s assumptions are open to serious question, this article demonstrates that Professor Wagner’s model does not, even on the basis of his stated assumptions, lead to the result he claims for it. Rather, his results …

I Know You Are, But What Am I? A Temporal Approach To Legal Classification, Wendy A. Adams

ExpressO

No real epistemological disagreement exists that legal knowledge can be represented and understood in categorical form. At issue is the extent to which categorical analysis captures the full complexity of legal reasoning. Can legal reasoning be represented as a taxonomy of mutually-exclusive classes, a taxonomy considered necessary if legal certainty and the rule of law are to prevail, or does the complexity of the process defy attempts at exhaustive classification?

The author agrees with those who argue that multiple legal concepts must often be applied simultaneously to resolve legal problems. The author also acknowledges that simultaneous application of multiple concepts …

The Role Of Patents In Fostering Open Innovation, John Dubiansky

ExpressO

The patent system is at an inherent tension with contemporary practices of innovation. American patent doctrine reveres the lone inventor who, through the marshalling of extraordinary insight and experimental toil, conceives a novel invention. As a reward, the inventor is given the right to profit from his contribution through personal commercial exploitation. While this perspective may have reflected the practice of the mechanical arts at the time of the nation’s founding, it no longer reflects contemporary industrial research and development, where innovation is an increasingly networked process.

This disconnect is evidenced by the fact that contemporary patent doctrine has failed …

Who Cares What Thomas Jefferson Thought About Patents: Reevaluating The Patent "Privilege" In Historical Context, Adam Mossoff

ExpressO

The conventional wisdom holds that American patents have always been grants of special monopoly privileges lacking any justification in natural rights philosophy, a belief based in oft-repeated citations to Thomas Jefferson's writings on patents. Using privilege as a fulcrum in its analysis, this Article reveals that the history of early American patent law has been widely misunderstood and misused. In canvassing primary historical sources, including political and legal treatises, Founders' writings, congressional reports, and long-forgotten court decisions, it explains how patent rights were defined and enforced under the social contract doctrine and labor theory of property of natural rights philosophy. …