Law Commons^™

Promoting Progress: A Qualitative Analysis Of Creative And Innovative Production, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is based on data collected as part of a larger qualitative empirical study based on face-to-face interviews with artists, scientists, engineers, their lawyers, agents and business partners. Broadly, the project involves the collecting and analysis of these interviews to understand how and why the interviewees create and innovate and to make sense of the intersection between intellectual property law and creative and innovative activity from the ground up. This chapter specifically investigates the concept of “progress” as discussed in the interviews. “Promoting progress” is the ostensible goal of the intellectual property protection in the United States, but what …

U.S. Vs. European Broadband Deployment: What Do The Data Say?, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

As the Internet becomes more important to the everyday lives of people around the world, commentators have tried to identify the best policies increasing the deployment and adoption of high-speed broadband technologies. Some claim that the European model of service-based competition, induced by telephone-style regulation, has outperformed the facilities-based competition underlying the US approach to promoting broadband deployment. The mapping studies conducted by the US and the EU for 2011 and 2012 reveal that the US led the EU in many broadband metrics.

• High-Speed Access: A far greater percentage of US households had access to Next Generation Access (NGA) …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Law, Business, And Economics Scholars In Alice Corp. V. Cls Bank, No. 13-298, Jason Schultz, Brian Love, James Bessen, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Circuit’s expansion of patentable subject matter in the 1990s led to a threefold increase in software patents, many of which contain abstract ideas merely tethered to a general-purpose computer. There is little evidence, however, to suggest this expansion has produced an increase in software innovation. The software industry was highly innovative in the decade immediately prior to this expansion, when the viability of software patentability was unclear and software patents were few. When surveyed, most software developers oppose software patenting, and, in practice, software innovators tend to rely on other tools to capture market share such as first-mover …

Toward A Jurisprudence Of Drug Regulation, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Efforts to foster transparency in biopharmaceutical regulation are well underway: drug manufacturers are, for example, legally required to register clinical trials and share research results in the United States and Europe. Recently, the policy conversation has shifted toward the disclosure of clinical trial data, not just trial designs and basic results. Here, I argue that clinical trial registration and disclosure of clinical trial data are necessary but insufficient. There is also a need to ensure that regulatory decisions that flow from clinical trials — whether positive (i.e. product approvals) or negative (i.e. abandoned products, product refusals, and withdrawals) — are …

Procedural Architecture Matters: Innovation Policy At The Federal Communications Commission, J. Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article examines the puzzle of whether today's Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or the "Agency") is institutionally suited to craft telecommunications innovation policy and, if not, what changes are needed to better equip the Agency to respond to twenty-first century realities. Evaluation of FCC innovation policy performance is stubbornly difficult. Some criticize the FCC as a brake on innovation yet, under the FCC's oversight, the United States' communications industry has become an innovative engine propelling the overall economy more than ever before. It is difficult to untangle whether the FCC deserves credit for helping usher in today's communications age, whether …

Toward A Closer Integration Of Law And Computer Science, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Legal issues increasingly arise in increasingly complex technological contexts. Prominent recent examples include the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), network neutrality, the increasing availability of location information, and the NSA’s surveillance program. Other emerging issues include data privacy, online video distribution, patent policy, and spectrum policy. In short, the rapid rate of technological change has increasingly shown that law and engineering can no longer remain compartmentalized into separate spheres. The logical response would be to embed the interaction between law and policy deeper into the fabric of both fields. An essential step would …

Power And Governance In Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent influx of patent pools, research consortia, and similar cooperative groups led by companies at the vanguard of American innovation has raised a pressing question: How does collective action influence the incentive to innovate? This question hinges on how patent pools are internally governed — a topic that has not been deeply examined by legal scholars. Through an original study of fifty-two private agreements, this Article pulls back the veil on patent licensing collectives to examine whether such organizations are designed to encourage long-term innovation.

This study draws on collective patent license agreements spanning the years 1856 to 2013 …