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Full-Text Articles in Law
Doctrine Of Equivalents: Is Festo The Right Decision For The Biomedical Industry., Faith S. Fillman
Doctrine Of Equivalents: Is Festo The Right Decision For The Biomedical Industry., Faith S. Fillman
St. Mary's Law Journal
The doctrine of equivalents, which Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co. threatens to overturn, is an equitable doctrine and should therefore provide patentees and competitors equal and fair protection. Prior to Festo, the Federal Circuit used two approaches: the complete bar rule and the flexible bar rule. Under the complete bar rule, the author must completely copy the patented art for infringement to occur, this is otherwise known as literal infringement. In contrast, under the flexible bar rule, infringement can occur if the product is closely related to the prior art. Federal Circuits have officially adopted the complete …
Environmental Law And The Supreme Court: Three Years Later, Richard J. Lazarus
Environmental Law And The Supreme Court: Three Years Later, Richard J. Lazarus
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In my Garrison Lecture three years ago, I surveyed the environmental law decisions of the Supreme Court between 1970 and 1999. I commented on which Justices had been more or less influential in shaping the Court's decisions and, even more provocatively (if not foolishly), sought to "score" the individual Justices on their responsiveness to environmental protection concerns based on their votes cast in a subset of those cases. The broader thesis of the lecture, however, was that there is something distinctively "environmental" about environmental law and that the Court's increasing inability to appreciate that dimension was leading to more poorly-reasoned …