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Full-Text Articles in Law
Clearing Opacity Through Machine Learning, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Arti K. Rai
Clearing Opacity Through Machine Learning, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Arti K. Rai
Articles
Artificial intelligence and machine learning represent powerful tools in many fields, ranging from criminal justice to human biology to climate change. Part of the power of these tools arises from their ability to make predictions and glean useful information about complex real-world systems without the need to understand the workings of those systems.
The Cost Of Novelty, Will Nicholson Price Ii
The Cost Of Novelty, Will Nicholson Price Ii
Articles
Patent law tries to spur the development of new and better innovative technology. But it focuses much more on “new” than “better”—and it turns out that “new” carries real social costs. I argue that patent law promotes innovation that diverges from existing technology, either a little (what I call “differentiating innovation”) or a lot (“exploring innovation”), at the expense of innovation that tells us more about existing technology (“deepening innovation”). Patent law’s focus on newness is unsurprising, and fits within a well-told narrative of innovative diversity accompanied by market selection of the best technologies. Unfortunately, innovative diversity brings not only …
Opting Into Device Regulation In The Face Of Uncertain Patentability, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Opting Into Device Regulation In The Face Of Uncertain Patentability, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
This article examines the intersection of patent law, FDA regulation, and Medicare coverage in a particularly promising field of biomedical innovation: genetic diagnostic testing. First, I will discuss current clinical uses of genetic testing and directions for further research, with a focus on cancer, the field in which genetic testing has had the greatest impact to date. Second, I will turn to patent law and address two recent Supreme Court decisions that called into question the patentability of many of the most important advances in genetic testing. Third, I will step outside patent law to take a broader view of …
Expired Patents, Trade Secrets, And Stymied Competition, W. Nicholson Price Ii
Expired Patents, Trade Secrets, And Stymied Competition, W. Nicholson Price Ii
Articles
Patents and trade secrecy have long been considered substitute incentives for innovation. When inventors create a new invention, they traditionally must choose between the two. And if inventors choose to patent their invention, society provides strong legal protection in exchange for disclosure, with the understanding that the protection has a limit: it expires twenty years from the date of filing. At that time, the invention is opened to the public and exposed to competition. This story is incomplete. Patent disclosure is weak and focuses on one technical piece of an invention—but that piece is often only a part of the …
Upstream Patents = Downstream Bottlenecks, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Michael A. Heller
Upstream Patents = Downstream Bottlenecks, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Michael A. Heller
Articles
Thirty years ago in Science, Garrett Hardin introduced the metaphor "tragedy of the commons" to help explain overpopulation, air pollution, and species extinction. People often overuse resources they own in common because they have no incentive to conserve. Today, Hardin's metaphor is central to debates in economics, law, and science and powerful justification for privatizing commons property. While the metaphor highlights the cost of overuse when governments allow too many people to use a scarce resource, it misses the possibility of underuse when governments give too many people rights to exclude others. Privatization can solve one tragedy, but cause another.