Law Commons^™

Future Of The Internet At Stake, Marc Greenberg

Publications

The Stop Online Piracy Act, H.R. 3261, introduced Oct. 26, has generated a firestorm of controversy, with critics assailing it for its chilling effect on the web and the Internet. After deciding to investigate this bill, I waded through piles of critiques, both pro and con. The bill itself, written in 78 mind-numbing pages of dense legislatese, on an initial read-through doesn't contain any "gotcha" terms that immediately support the conclusion of legislative overreach. The ostensible purpose of the bill is to combat the activities of alleged "rogue websites" based outside the U.S., which are engaged in widespread copyright infringement …

Ip Legal Ethics In The Everyday Practice Of Law: An Empirical Perspective On Patent Litigators, William T. Gallagher

Publications

This article presents preliminary findings from a qualitative empirical study of patent litigators. Part of a larger and ongoing project studying intellectual property lawyers in patent, trademark, and copyright enforcement and litigation actions, this article focuses on ethical decision-making by patent litigators in the pretrial discovery process. The article is based on data from in-depth, semistructured interviews with fifty-five patent litigators and from a detailed case study of the infamous Qualcomm patent sanctions case. The article critically examines how patent litigators perceive of and respond to ethical issues that arise in the discovery process. It also analyzes the structural and …

Unjust Patents & Bargaining Breakdown: When Is Declaratory Relief Needed?, Chester Chuang

Publications

The Declaratory Judgment Act is a statute designed to give parties uncertain of their legal rights the ability to obtain a fair and impartial determination of those rights. Any action for declaratory relief must meet certain minimum jurisdictional requirements, but, interestingly, even if the case meets those requirements, the Act expressly gives courts the discretion to accept or decline the case. When, then, should a court take such a case, and when should it decline? This question is particularly important in patent cases given the frequency with which declaratory relief actions arise in patent litigation.

This Article contends that a …

Overcoming Babel’S Curse: Adapting The Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

No abstract provided.

Efficient Uncertainty In Patent Interpretation, Harry Surden

Publications

Research suggests that widespread uncertainty over the scopes of issued patents creates significant costs for third-party firms and may decrease innovation. This Article addresses the scope uncertainty issue from a theoretical perspective by creating a model of patent claim scope uncertainty.

It is often difficult for third parties to determine the legal coverage of issued patents. Scope underdetermination exists when the words of a patent claim are capable of a broad range of plausible scopes ex ante in light of the procedures for interpreting patents. Underdetermination creates uncertainty about claim coverage because a lay interpreter cannot know which interpretation will …