Law Commons^™

The Morality Of Compulsory Licensing As An Access To Medicines Tool, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

This Article contemplates the validity of theft rhetoric in relation to the right of countries to grant compulsory licenses from an unconventional perspective; that of biblical teachings on what it means to steal.

Part I describes the use of theft rhetoric in relation to IP infringement broadly and drug-patent compulsory licenses in particular.

Part II challenges the contention, suggested by theft rhetoric, that compulsory licenses are morally wrong as a form of stealing, by considering the meaning of theft in the context of its Judeo-Christian origins.

Part III considers the cogency of the accusation that the issuance of compulsory licenses …

Defense Against The Dark Arts Of Copyright Trolling, Matthew Sag, Jake Haskell

Faculty Articles

In this Article, we offer both a legal and a pragmatic framework for defending against copyright trolls. Lawsuits alleging online copyright infringement by John Doe defendants have accounted for roughly half of all copyright cases filed in the United States over the past three years. In the typical case, the plaintiff’s claims of infringement rely on a poorly substantiated form pleading and are targeted indiscriminately at noninfringers as well as infringers. This practice is a subset of the broader problem of opportunistic litigation, but it persists due to certain unique features of copyright law and the technical complexity of Internet …

Foreign Patent Decisions And Harmonization: A View Of The Presumption Against Giving Foreign Patent Decisions Preclusive Effect In United States Proceedings In Light Of Patent Law International Harmonization, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

Where there is a United States patent, there are also likely multiple foreign counterpart patents. Armed with a patent, a holder can then move to stop others from infringing on his invention, and more often than not, the defendant will argue that the United States patent is invalid, often citing foreign decisions and proceedings in support of that claim. Given the territorial nature of patents and the fact that countries have different requirements and standards for granting patents, United States courts have applied a presumption against giving preclusive effect to foreign patent decisions. The courts, however, have made clear that …

Patent Infringement As Trespass, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

The now-conventional account of patent law holds that infringement is a strict liability offense, meaning that intent is not an element of an infringement claim. This account heightens the apparent injustice of patent law's special knowledge problem, that as ambiguous descriptions of intangible resources, patent claims do not sufficiently make potential infringers aware of a patentee's right to exclude. Particularly in the age of so-called "patent thickets, " clusters of patents of variable merit which are indistinguishable from each other and from prior art, strict liability, or infringement seems rather hard.

These problems reflect a conceptual misunderstanding. When infringement is …