Law Commons^™

Lessons For Patent Policy From Empirical Research On Patent Litigation, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reviews empirical patent litigation research to reveal patent policy lessons. First, the Article presents facts about patent litigation. Next, it analyzes the patent premium. Patent litigation research reveals little about the magnitude of the patent premium, but the research reveals the strategies firms use to capture the patent premium and the patent policy instruments that determine the patent premium. Next, the Article evaluates the patent prosecution process and notes that making efforts to refine a patent application can affect the value of the patent. The Article then identifies reforms for improving PTO performance. Finally, the Article discusses policy …

The Proven Key: Roles And Rules For Dictionaries In The Patent Office And The Courts, Joseph Scott Miller, James A. Hilsenteger

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in its continuing effort to develop a patent claim construction jurisprudence that yields predictable results, has turned to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and similar sources with increasing frequency. This paper explores, from both an empirical and a normative perspective, the Federal Circuit's effort to shift claim construction to a dictionary-based approach. In the empirical part, we present data showing that the Federal Circuit has, since its own in banc Markman decision in April 1995, used reference works such as dictionaries to construe claim terms with steadily increasing frequency. In addition, and contrary to …

Enhancing Patent Disclosure For Faithful Claim Construction, Joe Miller

Scholarly Works

Claim construction jurisprudence is in disarray. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reverses trial court claim construction decisions at a worryingly high rate. The proportion of Federal Circuit claim construction opinions that include separate concurrences or dissents continues to grow. And the muddled mix of issues the Federal Circuit framed for en banc review in the Phillips case suggests that the court is having trouble reaching consensus on what the central questions are, much less on how to answer them. Perhaps the path to adequately predictable claim construction is continued tinkering with the analytical constructs internal to …

A Comparative Study Of United States And Japanese Laws On Collaborative Inventions, And The Impact Of Those Laws On Technology Transfers, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

This research examines United States and Japanese laws regarding patent rights in collaborative inventions, and inquires whether these laws may impede technology transfers by creating uncertainty regarding the ownership, validity, or enforceability of the resulting patents, or by imposing undue obstacles to the licensing or assignment of such patents. Where the laws of the two countries differ, this paper compares the merits of each approach and also assesses whether the differing approaches could be troublesome for cross-border transactions.

One of the most significant differences between United States and Japanese law regarding joint inventions is in the requirement of consent for …

Indigenous Peoples And Intellectual Property, Stephen M. Mcjohn, Lorie Graham

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This paper, following on Michael F. Brown's Who Owns Native Culture?, suggests that intellectual property law, negotiation, and human rights precepts can work together to address indigenous claims to heritage protection. Granting intellectual property rights in such spheres as traditional knowledge and folklore does not threaten the public domain in the same way that expansion of intellectual property rights in more commercial spheres does. It is not so much a question of the public domain versus corporate and indigenous interests, as it is a question of the impact corporate interests have had on the indigenous claims. Indeed indigenous peoples' claims …

Patent Claim Interpretation Methodologies And Their Claim Scope Paradigms, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

The optimal scope of patent protection is an issue with which patent system observers have struggled for decades. Various patent doctrines have been recognized as tools for creating specific patent scopes and, as a result, implementing specific patent theories. One area of patent law that has not been addressed in the discussion on patent scope and theories is patent claim interpretation. This omission is particularly noteworthy because of the substantive role patent claims and the interpretation thereof play in the patent system, namely the framing of questions of patent infringement and validity. This Article will explore the not-yet-discussed relationship between …

Law As Design: Objects, Concepts, And Digital Things, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article initiates an account of things in the law, including both conceptual things and material things. Human relationships matter to the design of law. Yet things matter too. To an increasing extent, and particularly via the advent of digital technology, those relationships are not only considered ex post by the law but are designed into things, ex ante, by their producers. This development has a number of important dimensions. Some are familiar, such as the reification of conceptual things as material things, so that computer software is treated as a good. Others are new, such as the characterization of …