Law Commons^™

What Multinational Companies Need To Know About Patent Enforcement And Patent Litigation In China, J. Benjamin Bai, Peter J. Wang, Helen Cheng

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Social Networking Web Sites And The Dmca: A Safe-Harbor From Copyright Infringement Liability Or The Perfect Storm?, Jonathan J. Darrow, Gerald R. Ferrera

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Duty To Disclose Patent Rights, Richard M. Lebovitz

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Caveat Venditor: Technologically Protected Subsidized Goods And The Customers Who Hack Them, Christopher Soghoian

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

A (My)Space Of One's Own: On Privacy And Online Social Networks, Patricia Sanchez Abril

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Permanent Establishment In The Digital Age: Improving And Stimulating Debate Through An Access To Markets Proxy Approach, Benjamin Hoffart

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Well Duh: Obviousness, Gas Pedals, And The Teaching-Suggestion-Motivation Test, Randall J. Hirsch , M.D.

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Should Fashion Design Be Copyrightable?, Brandon Scruggs

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Importing Western Style, Exporting Tragedy: Changes In Indian Patent Law And Their Impact On Aids Treatment In Africa, Pooja Van Dyck

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Review Of The 2006 Trademark Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Christine Haight Farley, Geri L. Haight

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit delivered only seven precedential trademark opinions in 2006. The Court addressed a range of substantive issues including trade dress configuration, reverse passing off, and genericism. Notably, two of the seven precedential decisions involved plant names protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act. The Court decided only one case in 2006 where the primary issue was procedural, rather than substantive. In that case, the Court sided with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and affirmed its decision on the applicability of the res judicata doctrine. In 2006, as in previous years, …

Will Longer Antimicrobial Patents Improve Global Public Health?, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

The problem of antimicrobial resistance has led some infectious disease experts and their professional societies to propose the use of transferable intellectual property rights (wildcard patents) and patent term extensions as methods to encourage antimicrobial R&D. We evaluate recent approvals of new antimicrobial classes and find the number of new introductions is higher than previously suggested. More importantly, creating new patent rights is shown to be an inefficient and possibly counterproductive response to antimicrobial resistance. Wildcard patents would operate as a more than US$40 billion annual tax on heart disease, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and depression to inefficiently …

Will India And China Profit From Technological Innovation?, David Orozco

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Patent Ships Sail An Antitrust Sea, Joseph Scott Miller

Seattle University Law Review

The deeper truths evoked by patent ships sailing an antitrust sea are three. First, free competition is the pervasive, baseline reality, the background norm; patent protection is the temporary, partial exception. Second, we grasp both patent and antitrust policy with a common science: economics. Third, although neither patent nor antitrust law doctrines are good tools for fixing fundamental problems in the other body of law, both bodies of law help us better understand the shortcomings of the other. I explore these ideas in turn, below.

Panel 1: Ksr V. Teleflex: The Nonobviousness Requirement Of Patentability, John R. Thomas, John Richards, Herbert F. Schwartz, Steven J. Lee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

KSR is a big case because it addresses the only significant patentability requirement that exists under U.S. law. I count four fundamental patentability requirements: statutory subject matter, utility, novelty, and nonobviousness. It is plain that in the United States statutory subject matter is as broad as human experience itself. Utility, a very lenient requirement, is also easily met in most areas of technology. Novelty too is also easily satisfied. So what we are really left with is the fundamental gatekeeper to patentability. Should the Supreme Court raise that standard, it will effectively cede a great deal of proprietary subject matter …

Domain And Forum: Public Space, Public Freedom, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The particular problems of content and viewpoint discrimination rarely surface in copyright, though some people have argued that fair use implicates them. Nonetheless, one important lesson for copyright from public forum doctrine is that First Amendment law can take some - though not many - speech-related options off the table. In this brief comment, I argue that analogies between copyright law and public forum doctrine highlight important shared commitments to free and robust public discourse, but also substantial practical barriers to judicial enforcement of those commitments.

Transcript: Introduction To The Third Annual Ip/Gender: The Unmapped Connections Symposium, Victoria F. Phillips

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of History To The Design Of Competition Policy Strategy: The Federal Trade Commission And Intellectual Property Law, William E. Kovacic

Seattle University Law Review

The Article's framework for considering the value of history in shaping strategy is the effort of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to apply its competition policy powers to issues involving intellectual property (IP). The Article chooses the example of intellectual property because of its importance to the modern work of the FTC and the increasingly significant place that intellectual property and, more generally, technology-driven innovation hold in the field of competition policy. To provide context for the discussion, Part II of the Article presents a profile of the FTC's modern competition policy initiatives concerning intellectual property. Part III then reviews …

Independent Ink At The Crossroads Of Antitrust And Intellectual Property Law: The Court's Holding Regarding Market Power In Cases Involving Patents And Implications In Cases Involving Copyrights, Leonard J. Feldman, Rima J. Alaily, Chad D. Farrell

Seattle University Law Review

By eliminating the market power presumption for patent holders, Independent Ink calls into question the presumption's continued validity for tying arrangements involving copyrights. While the Court's holding directly applies only to patents, we present three reasons why, after Independent Ink, the presumption can no longer be viable in antitrust lawsuits challenging a tying arrangement involving a copyrighted product. First, the Court's rationale for eliminating the presumption including citations to extensive academic writings, agency guidelines, and legislative amendments precludes the presumption's continued application in any other context. Second, copyrights are significantly less likely than patents to confer market power because …

Structural Rights In Privacy, Harry Surden

Publications

This Essay challenges the view that privacy interests are protected primarily by law. Based upon the understanding that society relies upon nonlegal devices such as markets, norms, and structure to regulate human behavior, this Essay calls attention to a class of regulatory devices known as latent structural constraints and provides a positive account of their role in regulating privacy. Structural constraints are physical or technological barriers which regulate conduct; they can be either explicit or latent. An example of an explicit structural constraint is a fence which is designed to prevent entry onto real property, thereby effectively enforcing property rights. …

Restraints On Innovation, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Beginning with the work of Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s and later elaborated by Robert W. Solow's work on the neoclassical growth model, economics has produced a strong consensus that the economic gains from innovation dwarf those to be had from capital accumulation and increased price competition. An important but sometimes overlooked corollary is that restraints on innovation can do far more harm to the economy than restraints on traditional output or pricing. Many practices that violate the antitrust laws are best understood as restraints on innovation rather than restraints on pricing.

While antitrust models for assessing losses that result …

Should Property Or Liability Rules Govern Information?, Mark A. Lemley, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

This Article focuses on an unappreciated and significant aspect of the debate over property rules in the technology law context. In particular, it argues that the classic justification for legal entitlements protected by a property rule - i.e., a right to injunctive relief - depends on the ability to define and enforce property rights effectively. In the case of many technology markets, the inability to tailor injunctive relief so that it protects only the underlying right rather than also enjoining noninfringing conduct provides a powerful basis for using a liability rule (i.e., awarding the relevant damages to the plaintiff) instead …

Copyright, Fair Use And Motion Pictures, Peter Jaszi

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Within copyright law, the tension between contemporary creators' needs for access to preexisting material, on the one hand, and the imperatives of copyright ownership, on the other, are mediated primarily by the so-called "fair use" doctrine. The application of this venerable legal concept, which exempts some substantial takings of protected content from infringement liability, is the subject of this essay.

Secrecy And Access In An Innovation Intensive Economy: Reordering Information Privileges In Environmental, Health, And Safety Law, Mary L. Lyndon

University of Colorado Law Review

This article examines the law concerned with access to information that is commercially valuable when it is kept secret but is also essential to environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risk evaluation. EHS law stimulates sustainable economic activity, including new technologies, and thus complements intellectual property law. Access to EHS information is essential to risk management, but current disclosure obligations are unclear, as the law is a patchwork of familiar but ill-fitting concepts and entitlements. The article discusses the current law that affects disclosure, taking into account recent changes in the technological and economic landscape. It also describes the contrasting uses …

The Rule Of Intellectual Property Law In The Internet Economy, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that the technological attacks on intellectual property are a movement against democratically chosen intellectual property rules. They form a basic challenge to the rule of law and to the control of the rules wired into the network. In making this argument, the Article first maintains that intellectual property rights have an important public function in democracy in that they mark political, economic, and social boundaries. Next, the Article shows that the public law, as enacted by governments, has reallocated intellectual property rights to adapt to the information economy. While many aspects of this new allocation of rights …

Propertizing Thought, Kevin Emerson Collins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Constructive Nonvolition In Patent Law And The Problem Of Insufficient Thought Control, Kevin Emerson Collins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Why Do We Have Trade Secrets?, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Trade secrets are arguably the most important and most litigated form of intellectual property, yet very little has been written that justifies their existence, perhaps because they differ so much from other forms of intellectual property. This article explores the history of trade secret law in the United States and examines why it is that every state has opted to protect secret information, even though such protection is antithetical to the policies of access associated with patent law and non-protection of 'facts' associated with copyright law. In this article, I examine four potential ways to justify trade secret law. First, …