Law Commons^™

Open Source Approaches In Biotechnology: Utopia Revisited, Yann Joly

Maine Law Review

Tracing its origin to Greek antiquity, intellectual property has become an institution in modern legal systems worldwide. This growing importance of intellectual property was confirmed with the 1994 adoption of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which harmonized the rules of intellectual property amongst the various members of the international community on the model of developed countries. However enshrined in the legal tradition, intellectual property law has also had its share of detractors and has recently come under severe criticism. The exercise of intellectual property rights in such diverse fields of creation …

A Virtue-Centered Approach To The Biotechnology Commons (Or, The Virtuous Penguin), David W. Opderbeck

Maine Law Review

The instrumentalist emphasis of the current biotechnology intellectual property rights (IPR) debate is not surprising. In the American tradition, intellectual property law has long been justified primarily by instrumentalist concerns. Thomas Jefferson famously acceded to the “embarrassment of patent and copyright monopolies because he believed a limited monopoly would encourage the production of new scholarship and inventions. The framers' willingness to allow this embarrassment for the greater good is enshrined in the Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Countless judicial opinions refer to intellectual property law as a tool that provides necessary incentives to creators and innovators. Intellectual property …

Use Of Mediation To Recover Rights To Our Genes, Rachel Albert

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Trust: A Model For Disclosure In Patent Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Indiana Law Journal

How to draw the line between public and private is a foundational, first-principles question of privacy law, but the answer has implications for intellectual property, as well. This project is one in a series of papers about first-person disclosures of information in the privacy and intellectual property law contexts, and it defines the boundary between public and nonpublic information through the lens of social science —namely, principles of trust.

Patent law’s public use bar confronts the question of whether legal protection should extend to information previously disclosed to a small group of people. I present evidence that shows that current …

The Defend Trade Secrets Act: Why Interpreting The New Law On Its Own Terms Promotes Uniformity, Patrick Ruelle

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Trade secrets, a category of intellectual property recognized at state and federal law, are integral parts of many corporations’ intellectual property portfolios. A trade secret is a type of intellectual property that is not disclosed by its owner, and is therefore unlike patents, trademarks, or copyrights—all types of information that are disclosed to the public. As a result, trade secrets may represent a viable alternative to patents and copyrights since its value is derived from its secrecy.

In the United States, the laws governing trade secrets have typically been the offspring of the state common law. As each state developed …