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Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Technology Customers Are Being Sued En Masse For Patent Infringement & What Can Be Done, Colleen Chien, Edward Reines
Why Technology Customers Are Being Sued En Masse For Patent Infringement & What Can Be Done, Colleen Chien, Edward Reines
Faculty Publications
Last year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation were accused of patent infringement. Their alleged wrongdoing? Purchasing routers and using them to provide wireless services. A small Atlanta-based company called Bluewave, along with hundreds to thousands of small businesses, received demands for royalties for alleged patent infringement. The accusation? Using an off-the-shelf PDF machine. As incredible as they might seem, these mass patent assertions and the harm they cause are real – six out of the top ten patent litigation campaigns have exclusively named technology customers, not suppliers. This has drawn attention from state attorneys generals, …
'Holding Up' And 'Holding Out', Colleen Chien
'Holding Up' And 'Holding Out', Colleen Chien
Faculty Publications
Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it’s most vulnerable – after it has implemented a technology – and is able wrest a settlement because it’s too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is a term I use to describe the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands, because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises – the smartphone wars, standards patents, or trolls all involve …
Does The Us Patent System Need A Patent Small Claims Proceeding?, Colleen Chien, Michael J. Guo
Does The Us Patent System Need A Patent Small Claims Proceeding?, Colleen Chien, Michael J. Guo
Faculty Publications
Patent litigation is expensive. The primary motivation for the creation of a patent small claims proceeding is to make enforcement more affordable. However, in the twenty or so years since the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) first endorsed the idea of a small claims patent court through Resolution 401‐4, the patent litigation landscape has drastically changed. Although patent litigation costs are still high, the equities have shifted. The marketplace for patents has developed, providing more options than previously existed to monetize and assert patents. However, the cost of patent defense has not gone down, and small companies cannot afford …
The Irony Of Privacy Class Action Litigation, Eric Goldman
The Irony Of Privacy Class Action Litigation, Eric Goldman
Faculty Publications
In the past few years, publicized privacy violations have regularly spawned class action lawsuits in the United States, even when the company made a good faith mistake and no victim suffered any quantifiable harm. Privacy advocates often cheer these lawsuits because they generally favor vigorous enforcement of privacy violations, but this essay encourages privacy advocates to reconsider their support for privacy class action litigation. By its nature, class action litigation uses tactics that privacy advocates disavow. Thus, using class action litigation to remediate privacy violations proves to be unintentionally ironic.