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Full-Text Articles in Law
Completing The Energy Innovation Cycle: The View From The Public Utility Commission, Jonas J. Monast, Sarah K. Adair
Completing The Energy Innovation Cycle: The View From The Public Utility Commission, Jonas J. Monast, Sarah K. Adair
Faculty Scholarship
Achieving widespread adoption of innovative electricity generation technologies involves a complex system of research, development, demonstration, and deployment, with each phase then informing future developments. Despite a number of non-regulatory programs at the federal level to support this process, the innovation premium—the increased cost and technology risk often associated with innovative generation technologies—creates hurdles in the state public utility commission (“PUC”) process. These state level regulatory hurdles have the potential to frustrate federal energy goals and prevent the learning process that is a critical component to technology innovation. This Article explores how and why innovative energy technologies face challenges in …
Improving (Software) Patent Quality Through The Administrative Process, Arti K. Rai
Improving (Software) Patent Quality Through The Administrative Process, Arti K. Rai
Faculty Scholarship
The available evidence indicates that patent quality, particularly in the area of software, needs improvement. This Article argues that even an agency as institutionally constrained as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) could implement a portfolio of pragmatic, cost-effective quality improvement strategies. The argument in favor of these strategies draws upon not only legal theory and doctrine but also new data from a PTO software examination unit with relatively strict practices. Strategies that resolve around Section 112 of the patent statute could usefully be deployed at the initial examination stage. Other strategies could be deployed within the new post-issuance …
Structuring U.S. Innovation Policy: Creating A White House Office Of Innovation Policy, Stuart M. Benjamin, Arti K. Rai
Structuring U.S. Innovation Policy: Creating A White House Office Of Innovation Policy, Stuart M. Benjamin, Arti K. Rai
Faculty Scholarship
This article begins with a discussion of innovation’s importance to the future well-being of American society. The authors then discuss limitations of the current federal framework for making innovation policy. Specifically, the relative absence of innovation from the agenda of Congress and many relevant federal agencies manifests the confluence of two regulatory challenges: first, the tendency of political actors to focus on short-term goals and consequences; and second, political actors’ reluctance to threaten powerful incumbent actors. Courts, meanwhile, lack sufficient expertise and the ability to conduct the type of forward-looking policy planning that should be a hallmark of innovation policy. …