Law Commons^™

Pay The Troll Toll: The Patent Troll Model Is Fundamentally At Odds With The Patent System's Goal Of Innovation And Competition, Grace Heinecke

Fordham Law Review

Patent litigation has multiplied sixfold since the 1980s, with the last few years seeing an unprecedented number of patent lawsuits. When an inventor receives a patent, the U.S. Constitution grants him a monopoly for a limited number of years to reward him for his investment of time and resources and to incentivize him to continue innovating, which ultimately benefits society. However, the emergence of a litigious character, deemed the “patent troll,” has led to the patent system’s hindrance of innovation, a result that is at odds with the primary goal of patent law. Patent trolls exploit weaknesses in the patent …

Do Abstract Ideas Have The Need, The Need For Speed?: An Examination Of Abstract Ideas After Alice, Maria R. Sinatra

Fordham Law Review

Imagine you invented a way to perform mathematical calculations all over the world simultaneously. Now, imagine that you cannot patent your invention because it was compared to, and found to contain, the same idea as an abacus. This scenario was the outcome of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International.

In coming to its decision in Alice, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a two-part test that it had previously utilized to analyze the patentability of laws of nature to determine whether the patent at issue met the subject matter patentability standards of § 101 of the Patent Act. Determining …

Hacking Trademark Law For Collaborative Communities, Yana Welinder, Stephen Laporte

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Collaborative communities create popular work with widely recognized brands, such as Wikipedia, Linux, Android, and Firefox. Trademark law can provide protections to members of these communities and the users of their products so that they can rely on the brands to identify the original projects. This Article explores the conflict between collaborative communities and trademark law. While collaborative communities thrive on openness and decentralization, trademark law requires centralized quality control and various formalities. This Article introduces a descriptive taxonomy of “hacks” that collaborative communities have used to try to mitigate the tensions between their values and trademark law. These hacks …