Law Commons^™

Centering Black Women In Patent History, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Kara Swanson’s latest article is a remarkable example of legal historical scholarship that excavates stories from the past to illuminate the present. It is chock full of archival evidence and historical analysis that explains gaps and silences in the United States patent registry as evidence of marginalized inventors–particularly Black women–who should be named inventors but are not.

The article is arresting reading for anyone interested in antebellum history, intellectual property, and the intersection of racism and sexism in law. Mostly, I am grateful to Professor Swanson for doing the obviously very hard work of digging through archives, reading microfiche, …

Homography Of Inventorship: Dabus And Valuing Inventors, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

On July 28, 2021, the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience ("DAB US") became the first computer to be recognized as a patent inventor. Due to the advocacy of DAB US's inventor, Dr. Stephen Thaler, the world's definition of "inventor" has finally fractured - dividing patent regimes between recognition of machine inventorship and lack thereof This division has sparked many scholarly conversations about inventorship contribution, but none have discussed the implications of a homographic inventorship.

This Article addresses the implications of international homographic inventorship - where countries have different notions and rules concerning patent inventorship - and the …

Alice Corp. V. Cls Bank Int'l, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Congress has the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."' Patent law subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. section 101 creates a balance between incentivizing inventors to publicly disclose their knowledge and protecting the public from monopolies on ideas. Allowing inventors to monopolize the basic tools of scientific and technological work might "tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote it."² "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas" constitute unpatentable subject matter under section 101.³ The section 101 inquiry serves as a threshold test to determine if the subject matter of …

Where Have The Great Inventers Gone?, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

The author expands on the idea that the patent system has been a hinderance to collaborative innovation.