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Full-Text Articles in Law
Intellectual Property For Market Experimentation, Michael B. Abramowicz, John F. Duffy
Intellectual Property For Market Experimentation, Michael B. Abramowicz, John F. Duffy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Intellectual property protects investments in the production of information, but the literature on the topic has largely neglected one type of information that intellectual property might protect: information about the market success of goods and services. A first entrant into a market often cannot prevent other firms from free-riding on information about consumer demand and market feasibility. Despite the existence of some first-mover advantages, the incentives to be the first entrant into a market may sometimes be inefficiently low, thereby giving rise to a net first-mover disadvantage and discouraging innovation. Intellectual property may counteract this inefficiency by providing market exclusivity, …
Engineering A Deal: Toward A Private Ordering Solution To The Anticommons Problem, F. Scott Kieff, Troy A. Paredes
Engineering A Deal: Toward A Private Ordering Solution To The Anticommons Problem, F. Scott Kieff, Troy A. Paredes
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The problems of the intellectual property ("IP") anticommons are infamous. Many people fear that the potential for vast numbers of IP rights to cover a single good or service will prevent an enterprise from even attempting to launch a business for fear of being unduly taxed or retarded or simply held up. This Article offers a solution based on private ordering within the context of existing laws. This approach uses a limited liability entity structured so that IP owners are given an actual stake in the operating business and thus an incentive to participate in the enterprise; and yet at …
An Approach To Intellectual Property, Bankruptcy, And Corporate Control, F. Scott Kieff, Troy A. Paredes
An Approach To Intellectual Property, Bankruptcy, And Corporate Control, F. Scott Kieff, Troy A. Paredes
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Corporate control is the central concern of corporate law, and, in addition to priority, has become a core concern of bankruptcy. The question of corporate control in bankruptcy is especially important for intellectual property ("IP") rights. Bankruptcy proceedings do not compromise fundamentally the value of most tangible assets. Tangible assets generally retain their value both during and after bankruptcy proceedings, although there is always the risk that the business will be run poorly. IP is different. IP rights are typically most valuable when they carry a credible threat of injunction. As a result, to the extent the delay and coordination …
Ip Transactions: On The Theory & Practice Of Commercializing Innovation, F. Scott Kieff
Ip Transactions: On The Theory & Practice Of Commercializing Innovation, F. Scott Kieff
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
All too often within organizations and communities, innovations are not generated or put to use as rapidly or as broadly as they could be. Chief targets for blame include the problems of transaction costs, agency costs, lack of coordination, and improper incentives. Borrowing from the rich literature in the field generally known as new institutional economics, which has studied these types of problems more broadly, this Article elucidates how some practical tools might be expected to mitigate such problems. Particular arrangements of formal law and informal practice may help reach across the "valley of death" between early stage technologies and …
The Case For Registering Patents And The Law And Economics Of Present Patent-Obtaining Rules, F. Scott Kieff
The Case For Registering Patents And The Law And Economics Of Present Patent-Obtaining Rules, F. Scott Kieff
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
(Note: this is a substantially revised version of Harvard Olin Working Paper No. 415 of May 2003, SSRN Abstract ID No. 392202 (http://ssrn.com/abstract=392202) and includes more detailed discussion of issues including the DOE, willfulness and the Knorr decision, and the FTC Report on patents and antitrust.)
Critics of the patent system suggest the rules for determining patentability should be stricter, subjecting patents to more scrutiny during Patent Office examination. This Article offers a counterintuitive model system under which patent applications are registered, not examined, to elucidate a new normative view that sees present positive law rules for obtaining patents as …
Contrived Conflicts: The Supreme Court Versus The Basics Of Intellectual Property Law, F. Scott Kieff
Contrived Conflicts: The Supreme Court Versus The Basics Of Intellectual Property Law, F. Scott Kieff
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Asked by conference organizers to consider the impact of the Supreme Court on intellectual property this millennium, this essay offers the view that the Supreme Court's intellectual property decisions by its present members generally are premised upon what may be viewed as contrived conflicts among bodies of law. Proceeding from this faulty foundation, the Court's efforts to resolve those conflicts subsequently have generated bodies of judge-made law that frustrate in important ways the basic statutory framework of intellectual property law. Examples of cases employing this problematic approach include Bonito Boats, Dastar, Warner-Jenkinson, Festo, TrafFix, and Holmes. Avoiding the contrivances not …
Patents For Environmentalists, F. Scott Kieff
Patents For Environmentalists, F. Scott Kieff
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This essay, written for the National Association of Environmental Law Societies' (NAELS) annual meeting, explains how patent law operates generally with an emphasis on how it may impact the environment in particular. In so doing, the essay addresses from a patent perspective some representative concerns relating to patents that appear to be prevalent in the environmental literature and shows how the patent system may provide substantial benefit for those favoring the environment.