Law Commons^™

Brief Of Patent Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

This Court should reverse the Federal Circuit and hold that IPR estoppel extends only to grounds that were raised or could have been raised during the IPR proceeding. Estoppel would therefore extend to instituted grounds, whether raised during the proceeding or not. Estoppel would not extend to uninstituted grounds, such as grounds which might have been challenged in the petition for review but were not.

Certiorari In Patent Cases, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the decade from 2010 to 2019, the Supreme Court has decided more patent law cases than in the prior three decades combined. A higher percentage of its docket has been patent cases--5.45%--than in any decade in the last century. A number of scholars have advanced theories of why this rate of review of patent cases has increased and provided quantitative analyses. Yet no scholarship to date has used qualitative data to investigate why the Supreme Court’s patent docket is increasing and what factors the Supreme Court considers in its review of patent cases. This paper shares statistics of the …

Equitable Defenses In Patent Law, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In patent law, “unenforceability” can have immense consequences. At least five equitable doctrines make up the defense of “unenforceability” as it was codified into the Patent Act in 1952: laches; estoppel; unclean hands; patent misuse; and according to some, inequitable conduct. Yet in the seventy years since incorporation of equitable defenses into the patent statute, the Supreme Court has not clarified their reach. Indeed, twice in the last four years, the Supreme Court avoided giving complete guidance on the crucial questions of whether, and when, such equitable defenses are available to bar damages in cases brought at law.

Several interpretive …

The Scope Of Ipr Estoppel: A Statutory, Historical, And Normative Analysis, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

When Congress implemented inter partes review (IPR) and other patent post-grant proceedings through the passage of the America Invents Act (AIA) in 2011, it provided that petitioners would be estopped in later proceedings from raising grounds for invalidity that they "raised or reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review." 35 U.S.C. § 315( e )(2). However, substantial uncertainty in courts' interpretation of this provision causes an enormous impact on an accused patent infringer's decision of whether and on what grounds to petition for review. One reading of the statutory estoppel provision suggests that "during that inter partes review" …

Comment With The Copyright Office Regarding A Proposed Exemption Under 17 U.S.C. Section 1201 For Software Security Research (Class 25), Candice Hoke

Law Faculty Reports and Comments

Professor Candice Hoke, Cleveland State University, and others (Douglas W. Jones, University of Iowa; Professor Deirdre Mulligan, University of California, Berkeley; Professor Vern Paxson, University of California, Berkeley;Professor Pamela Samuelson, University of California, Berkeley; Bruce Schneier Erik Stallman, Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT); comment addressing Proposed Class 25: Software Security Research and an exemption for software security research in order to promote the active research and testing efforts necessary to keep pace with evolving cybersecurity risks. Software and related access controls are increasingly embedded in a wide range of systems, from consumer goods to medical devices to infrastructure to …

Excluding Patentability Of Therapeutic Methods, Including Methods Using Pharmaceuticals, For The Treatment Of Humans Under Trade Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights Article 27(3)(A), Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ("TRIPS"), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT"), and the World Trade Organization ("WTO") debacle has radically altered the traditional ability of nations to adopt whatever patent regime seems appropriate to them. Instead, TRIPS requires all member nations, even those which never thought it appropriate to grant such state monopolies, to afford patent protection to areas which had never been granted before-most dramatically in the area of health related innovations and, most expensively, pharmaceuticals. Until TRIPS, most -- or at least a number approaching half -- countries simply did …

Continuing The Conversation Of "The Economic Irrationality Of The Patent Misuse Doctrine", Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article seeks to use economic tools and insights to find the best way for courts to construe or for Congress to modify the patent misuse doctrine. As the title suggests, it attempts to continue the conversation begun by Professor Mark Lemley in his often-cited Comment, The Economic irrationality of the Patent Misuse Doctrine.

Part I provides a brief history of the doctrine of patent misuse. Part II begins with a premise that a partial economic equilibrium can be achieved by attempting to match Congress's intended patent scope with the actual patent scope, even assuming that economic tools can never …

A Definite Claim On Claim Indefiniteness: An Empirical Study Of Definiteness Cases Of The Past Decade With A Focus On The Federal Circuit And The Insolubly Ambiguous Standard, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This empirical study of patent claim definiteness cases of the past decade makes several novel findings including: (1) slightly more than half of final Federal Circuit definiteness cases hold the asserted claims not indefinite; (2) the percentage of non-Federal Circuit definiteness cases holding claims not indefinite increased approximately 60 percentage points over the ten-year period focused on in this analysis;(3) the Federal Circuit more often held chemical claims not indefinite, but electrical claims indefinite; and (4) the Federal Circuit more often held claims with term clarity issues not indefinite, but claims with means-plus-function issues indefinite. These differences partially result from …

The Tangled Web Of Plagiarism Litigation: Sorting Out The Legal Issues, Ralph D. Mawdsley

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The purpose of this article is to explore the increasing complexity of plagiarism litigation in the United States. A determination as to when attribution is necessary in order to avoid a charge of plagiarism raises questions of intent and subject matter specific questions of general knowledge, as well as constitutional and contractual questions of fairness, tort questions of defamation, and questions of fair use under copyright law or misrepresentation under the Lanham Act. Most of the reported cases still involve students who contest discipline from their respective academic institutions--discipline that can range from a course penalty to expulsion from the …

Patent Politics, Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

To observe that so-called intellectual property (IP) flowered in the late twentieth century, even supplanting, to a large extent, the place of real and tangible personal property in terms of corporate, if not individual, wealth, is almost trite. Since IP has become the bedrock of most commercial wealth, especially in international trade, and since international trade is, or is about to become, the center of most commercially valuable trade, a comprehensive understanding of IP has become essential. Instead of being the reserve of technicians, the field demands a full examination by jurists and the larger society.Although IP literature has blossomed, …

Some Realism About Indigenism, Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The debate about creating so-called intellectual property (“IP”)--legal monopolies--over indigenous information (a product mostly of Third World countries) is habitually (almost stereotypically) characterized by qualifications that such monopolies really don't fit, and further qualifications that although they don't fit they are the best alternative. But underlying both sets of qualifications is often a confusion about what the real problem is. Because of a frequent failure to analyze closely the problem (and sometimes because of misinformation mixed with an unhealthy dose of romanticism), critics far too often jump to the legal monopoly solution to problems that ironically may be in large …

Brief Amici Curiae Of The Progressive Intellectual Property Law Association And The Union For The Public Domain In Partial Support Of Petitioners, Eldred V. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003), Michael H. Davis

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

This case affords this Court a unique opportunity to do more by doing less. Judicial restraint generally impels this Court to decide only essential constitutional issues. Here the issues are uniquely situated so that the decision of only one issue—that of retrospective extensions—will do far more than merely defer the remaining issue of prospective extensions, but will render that issue permanently beyond any need of judicial review. If this Court decides that retrospective extensions are unconstitutional, it will not only be able to avoid deciding the other issue today of whether a prospective extension violates the “limited times” Constitutional provision3 …

Extending Copyright And The Constitution: "Have I Stayed Too Long", Michael H. Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

On October 27, 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-298, 112 Stat. 2827 (hereinafter the “Bono Law”). The Bono Law extended the term of copyright protection by an additional twenty years, both prospectively and retrospectively. The former is probably constitutionally proper; the latter is almost certainly forbidden by the Constitution's copyright clause. But most criticism5 has not forcefully distinguished between retrospective as opposed to prospective extension and so far has failed to convince either Congress or the courts of any constitutional infirmity. This is because most critics agree-or …

The Screenwriter's Indestructible Right To Terminate Her Assignment Of Copyright: Once A Story Is 'Pitched' A Studio Can Never Obtain All Copyrights In The Story, Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is probably not quite fraud, though it comes terribly close to it, when motion picture and television production companies convince their writers to part with the rights to their stories when they sign with the companies. Despite contracts that claim the writer has no rights to the resulting script (either because the author has assigned his rights “in perpetuity” or because he has agreed to produce a “workfor hire”), U.S. copyright law provides many authors, perhaps the vast majority of them, with a future right that cannot be lost and can always be regained, irrespective of any written contract …

Brief Amicus Curiae Of The Taxpayers Asset Project Of The Center For Study Of Responsive Law In Support Of Petitioners, Genetics Institute, Inc., Et. Al. V. Amgen Inc., 502 U.S. 856 (1991), Michael H. Davis

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

Although a patent appears to be a private right, that private right is only "secondary," as this Court has stated, to the public bargain of which it is but a part. The focus must always be whether the public has received full information about the nature of the invention so that future inventors may reuse and improve it. The decision below reflects a failure to recognize the patent's monopoly nature and as a result abandons the "best mode" rule forbidding the inventor form concealing the best way of replicating the invention. By turning the subjective test of "best mode" into …

Death Of A Salesman's Doctrine : A Critical Look At Trademark Use, Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

A trademark is a salesman. It does the work of its owner by wearing a smile, by presenting a good image, and in Willy Loman's words, by being well liked. It is, of course, the usual view that the death of the salesman, Willy Loman, was a suicide. Due to the assault upon the requirement of prior trademark use and the growth of a token use doctrine, what happened to Willy Loman has happened to the trademark use doctrine. In the end, it seemed too expensive and it was killed off—partially by its own hand, due to its own internal …