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Full-Text Articles in Law

Virotech Patents, Viropiracy, And Viral Sovereignty, Peter K. Yu Dec 2013

Virotech Patents, Viropiracy, And Viral Sovereignty, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Although there are many important intellectual property and public health developments in the United States, the domestic debate remains surprisingly disconnected from the international debate. To help bridge this disconnect, this Article discusses the interrelationship between intellectual property and public health in the context of communicable diseases. This type of disease is intentionally picked to highlight how developments abroad could easily affect what happens at home, and vice versa.

The first half of this Article recounts three distinct stories about viruses responsible for AIDS, SARS, and the avian influenza (H5N1). The first story focuses on the ongoing developments within the …


Parody As Brand, Stacey Dogan, Mark Lemley Dec 2013

Parody As Brand, Stacey Dogan, Mark Lemley

Faculty Scholarship

Courts have struggled with the evaluation of parody under trademark law. While many trademark courts have protected parodies, there are a surprising number of cases that hold obvious parodies illegal. The problem is particularly severe with respect to parodies that are used to brand products, a growing category. The doctrinal tools that generally protect expressive parodies often don't apply to brand parodies. Our goal in this paper is to think about what circumstances (if any) should lead courts to find parody illegal. We conclude that, despite courts’ increasing attention to speech interests in recent years, the law’s treatment of parody …


Do Npes Matter? Non-Practicing Entities And Patent Litigation Outcomes, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan H. Ashtor Nov 2013

Do Npes Matter? Non-Practicing Entities And Patent Litigation Outcomes, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan H. Ashtor

Faculty Scholarship

It is widely argued that so-called “patent trolls” are corrupting the U.S. patent system and endangering technology innovation and commercialization at large. For example, a recent White House report argued that “trolls” hurt firms of all sizes and advocated for specific policies aimed at curtailing practices thought to be particularly harmful. Yet the existence and extent of any systematic effects of so-called “troll-like” behavior, and the implications of modern patent assertion practices by Non-Practicing Entities (“NPEs”), remains unclear. This article develops novel empirical evidence to inform the debate over NPEs on patent litigation. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale empirical analysis …


Intellectual Property Defenses, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky Oct 2013

Intellectual Property Defenses, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Reverse Payments, Perverse Incentives, Murat C. Mungan Oct 2013

Reverse Payments, Perverse Incentives, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Issuing and enforcing prescription drug patents requires courts and legislatures to strike a delicate balance. A patent gives drug manufacturers a legal, if temporary, monopoly on sales of a drug; this encourages manufacturers to engage in costly research and development of new medicines. But not all patents issued by the Patent Office are ultimately deemed valid – generic drug manufacturers can infringe the patent, and, when sued, attack its validity in court on a variety of grounds, including obviousness. In recent years, patent holders have begun to settle these suits (which they initiated) by paying the alleged infringer. Not surprisingly, …


Explaining The ‘Unpredictable’: An Empirical Analysis Of U.S. Patent Infringement Awards, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan Hillel Aug 2013

Explaining The ‘Unpredictable’: An Empirical Analysis Of U.S. Patent Infringement Awards, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan Hillel

Faculty Scholarship

Patent infringement awards are commonly thought to be unpredictable, which raises concerns that patents can lead to unjust enrichment and impede the progress of innovation. We investigate the unpredictability of patent damages by conducting a large-scale econometric analysis of award values. We begin by analyzing the outcomes of 340 cases decided in US federal courts between 1995 and 2008 in which infringement was found and damages were awarded. Our data include the amount awarded, along with information about the litigants, case specifics and economic value of the patents-at-issue. Using these data, we construct an econometric model that explains over 75% …


Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach May 2013

Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

¶Continuing advances in consumer information technology have made video editing, once difficult, into a relatively simple matter. The average consumer can easily create and edit videos, and post them online. Inevitably many of these posted videos incorporate existing copyrighted content, raising questions of infringement, derivative versus transformative use, fair use, and parody.¶ ¶This article looks at several such works, with its main focus on one category of examples: the Downfall Hitler meme. Downfall Hitler videos take as their starting point a particular sequence - Hitler's breakdown rant - from the 2004 German film Der Untergang [Downfall in the US]. The …


The Federal Circuit As A Federal Court, Paul Gugliuzza May 2013

The Federal Circuit As A Federal Court, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals and, as a consequence, the last word on many legal issues important to innovation policy. This Article shows how the Federal Circuit augments its already significant power by impeding other government institutions from influencing the patent system. Specifically, the Federal Circuit has shaped patent-law doctrine, along with rules of jurisdiction, procedure, and administrative law, to preserve and expand the court’s power in four interinstitutional relationships: the court’s federalism relationship with state courts, its separation of powers relationship with the executive and legislative branches, its vertical …


Five Oft-Repeated Questions About China's Recent Rise As A Patent Power, Peter K. Yu Apr 2013

Five Oft-Repeated Questions About China's Recent Rise As A Patent Power, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers, industries, commentators and the media have widely criticized China for its failure to adequately protect intellectual property rights. In recent years, however, the discourse on intellectual property developments in China has slowly begun to change. Such a change is the most notable in the patent area. Today, China is already among the top five countries filing patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). In 2011, the number of PCT applications increased by 33.4% to 16,406, earning China the fourth spot, behind only the United States, Japan and Germany. Among all the applicants, ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies had …


Just Undercompensation: The Idiosyncratic Premium N Eminent Domain, Brian A. Lee Apr 2013

Just Undercompensation: The Idiosyncratic Premium N Eminent Domain, Brian A. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Notice Failure And Notice Externalities, Michael J. Meurer, Peter Menell Apr 2013

Notice Failure And Notice Externalities, Michael J. Meurer, Peter Menell

Faculty Scholarship

Economic theory suggests that notice plays a critical role in resource development. Resource developers will be disinclined to make significant investments without reasonable confidence that their projects will not violate the rights of others. Land rights systems and institutions generally provide reliable notice at relatively modest cost, enabling exclusionary rights to encourage efficient real estate development. Property boundaries, right structures, and neighbors with whom resource developers might have to negotiate conflicts can usually be ascertained relatively easily. Furthermore, zoning institutions generally provide relatively prompt, low cost, and reliable dispute resolution before developers need to expend substantial resources. Therefore, land claims …


A Case For The Public Domain, Clark Asay Feb 2013

A Case For The Public Domain, Clark Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past several decades open license movements have proven highly successful in the software and content worlds. Such movements rely in part on the belief that greater freedom of use triggers innovative activity that is superior to what a restrictive IP approach produces. Ironically, such open license movements also rely on IP rights to promote their vision of freedom and openness. They do so through IP licenses that, while granting significant freedoms, also impose certain conditions on users such as the “copyleft” requirement in the software world. Such movements rely on this IP-based approach due to fears that, without …


Of Smart Phone Wars And Software Patents, Stuart Graham, Saurabh Vishnubhakat Feb 2013

Of Smart Phone Wars And Software Patents, Stuart Graham, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

Among the main criticisms currently confronting the US Patent and Trademark Office are concerns about software patents and what role they play in the web of litigation now proceeding in the smart phone industry. We will examine the evidence on the litigation and the treatment by the Patent Office of patents that include software elements. We present specific empirical evidence regarding the examination by the Patent Office of software patents, their validity, and their role in the smart phone wars. More broadly, this article discusses the competing values at work in the patent system and how the system has dealt …


Patenting Nature: A Problem Of History, Christopher Beauchamp Jan 2013

Patenting Nature: A Problem Of History, Christopher Beauchamp

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A Numerus Clausus Principle For Intellectual Property, Christina Mulligan Jan 2013

A Numerus Clausus Principle For Intellectual Property, Christina Mulligan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, James Ming Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Thomas Folsom, Timothy S. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank A. Pasquale, Elizabeth A. Reilly, Jeffery Samuels, Katherine J. Strandburg, Kara W. Swanson, Andrew W. Torrance, Katharine A. Van Tassel Jan 2013

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, James Ming Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Thomas Folsom, Timothy S. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank A. Pasquale, Elizabeth A. Reilly, Jeffery Samuels, Katherine J. Strandburg, Kara W. Swanson, Andrew W. Torrance, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Faculty Scholarship

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions. Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …


Coping With The America Invents Act: Patent Challenges For Startup Companies, Patricia E. Campbell Jan 2013

Coping With The America Invents Act: Patent Challenges For Startup Companies, Patricia E. Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Building The Ladder: Three Decades Of Development Of The Chinese Patent System, Peter K. Yu Jan 2013

Building The Ladder: Three Decades Of Development Of The Chinese Patent System, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In the past three decades, China has been very successful in developing its patent system. In 2012, the country is among the top five countries filing patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, behind only the United States, Japan and Germany. Among all the applicants, ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies had the largest and fourth largest number of PCT applications, respectively. With significant backing from the Chinese government and the anticipated involvement of the world's largest public sector, China will likely catch up with the existing intellectual property powers more quickly than many have anticipated.

Written for a special issue …


Improvidently Granted: Why The En Banc Federal Circuit Chose The Wrong Claim Construction Issue, Greg Reilly Jan 2013

Improvidently Granted: Why The En Banc Federal Circuit Chose The Wrong Claim Construction Issue, Greg Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently granted en banc review in Lighting Ballast Control LLC v Philips Electronics North America Corp to decide whether to afford deference to a district court’s interpretation of patent claims, a step that has been heralded as potentially “lead[ing] to fundamental, far-reaching changes in patent law and patent litigation strategies.” Over the next few months, the parties, scores of amici, and commentators will spend reams of paper and untold amounts of money arguing whether claim construction—interpreting the short, numbered paragraphs at the end of the patent that define the patentee’s …


Does Agency Funding Affect Decisionmaking?: An Empirical Assessment Of The Pto’S Granting Patterns, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman Jan 2013

Does Agency Funding Affect Decisionmaking?: An Empirical Assessment Of The Pto’S Granting Patterns, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Gandhi And Copyright Pragmatism, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Jan 2013

Gandhi And Copyright Pragmatism, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Mahatma Gandhi is revered the world over for his views on freedom and nonviolence – ideas that he deployed with great success during India’s freedom struggle. As a thinker, he is commonly considered to have been a moral idealist: anti-utilitarian in mindset and deeply skeptical of market mechanisms. Yet, when he engaged with copyright law – as a writer, editor, and publisher – he routinely abjured the idealism of his abstract thinking in favor of a lawyerly pragmatism. Characterized by a nuanced understanding of copyright law and its conflicting normative goals, Gandhi’s thinking on copyright law reveals a reasoned, contextual, …


Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Jan 2013

Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Should copyright infringement claims be treated as marketable assets? Copyright law has long emphasized the free and independent alienability of its exclusive rights. Yet, the right to sue for infringement – which copyright law grants authors in order to render its exclusive rights operational – has never been thought of as independently assignable, or indeed as the target of investments by third parties. As a result, discussions of copyright law and policy rarely consider the possibility of an acquisition or investment market emerging for actionable copyright claims and the advantages that such a market might hold for copyright’s goals, objectives, …


Kirtsaeng And The First-Sale Doctrine's Digital Problem, Clark D. Asay Jan 2013

Kirtsaeng And The First-Sale Doctrine's Digital Problem, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Many have lauded the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. as a significant victory for the first-sale doctrine under copyright law. However, in the digital context, the Kirtsaeng holding and the first-sale doctrine in general face extinction. This Essay argues for the first-sale doctrine's survival in the digital context.


Certain Patents, Alan C. Marco, Saurabh Vishnubhakat Jan 2013

Certain Patents, Alan C. Marco, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents the first in a series of studies of stock market reactions to the legal outcomes of patent cases. From a sample of patents litigated during a 20-year period, we estimate market reactions to patent litigation decisions and to patent grants. These estimates reveal that the resolution of legal uncertainty over patent validity and patent infringement is, on average, worth as much to a firm as is the initial grant of the patent right. Each is worth about 1.0-1.5% excess returns on investment. There are significant differences between such market reactions before and after the establishment in 1982 …


A Case For The Public Domain, Clark D. Asay Jan 2013

A Case For The Public Domain, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past several decades open license movements have proven highly successful in the software and content worlds. Such movements rely in part on the belief that greater freedom of use triggers innovative activity that is superior to what a restrictive IP approach produces. Ironically, such open license movements also rely on IP rights to promote their vision of freedom and openness. They do so through IP licenses that, while granting significant freedoms, also impose certain conditions on users such as the “copyleft” requirement in the software world. Such movements rely on this IP-based approach due to fears that, without …


Stewarding The Common Law Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Jan 2013

Stewarding The Common Law Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law is today perceived as principally statutory in origin. The Copyright Act of 1976 is thought to have codified most questions of copyright policy and doctrine, and delegated a fairly limited set of questions to courts for them to resolve incrementally on a case-by-case basis. This is in contrast to prior copyright enactments, which were brief and open-ended in structure, and seemingly envisaged a more active role for courts in rule- and policy-making. Judge Leval thus notes how over time, the idea of a constructive "partnership" between the legislature and courts in making and developing copyright law that once …


Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich Jan 2013

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Faculty Scholarship

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …


Trademark Cosmopolitanism, Sonia K. Katyal Jan 2013

Trademark Cosmopolitanism, Sonia K. Katyal

Faculty Scholarship

The world of global trademarks can be characterized in terms of three major shifts: first, a shift from national to global branding strategies; second, a shift from national and regional systems to harmonized international regimes governing trademark law; and third, a concurrent shift from local to transnational social movements that challenge branding and other corporate practices. The rise of transnational brands brings with it an attendant series of legal shifts in trademark law. Long considered the stepchild of intellectual property law, today, trademark law has morphed into a powerful global legal phenomenon, revealing a foundational shift from national and regional …


Critical Legal Studies In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, (Symposium), Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich, Rebecca L. Tushnet Jan 2013

Critical Legal Studies In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, (Symposium), Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich, Rebecca L. Tushnet

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Dissemination Must Serve Authors: How The U.S. Supreme Court Erred, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2013

Dissemination Must Serve Authors: How The U.S. Supreme Court Erred, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The US Congress has enacted expansions of copyright which arguably impose high social costs and generate little incentives for authorial creativity. When the two most expansive statutes were challenged as unconstitutional, the US Supreme Court rebuffed the challenges, partly on the supposed ground that copyright law could legitimately seek to promote nonauthorial interests; apparently, Congress could enact provisions aiming to support noncreative disseminative activities such as publishing, or restoring and distributing old film stock, even if authorial incentives were not served. Such an error might have arisen because of three phenomena (in economics, history, and law, respectively) that might easily …