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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law
Confidentiality In Patent Dispute Resolution: Antitrust Implications, Mark R. Patterson
Confidentiality In Patent Dispute Resolution: Antitrust Implications, Mark R. Patterson
Washington Law Review
Information is crucial to the functioning of the patent system, as it is for other markets. Nevertheless, patent licensing terms are often subject to confidentiality agreements. On the one hand, this is not surprising: sellers and buyers do not normally publicize the details of their transactions. On the other hand, explicit confidentiality agreements are not common in other markets, and they may be particularly problematic for patents. Several United States Supreme Court cases have condemned agreements that suppress market information, and those cases could be applied to confidentiality agreements in the patent context. Of course, confidentiality may sometimes be pro-competitive, …
Unilateral Refusals To Deal In Intellectual Property After Image Techical Services, Inc. V. Eastman Kodak Co., Brian F. Ladenburg
Unilateral Refusals To Deal In Intellectual Property After Image Techical Services, Inc. V. Eastman Kodak Co., Brian F. Ladenburg
Washington Law Review
While the Federal Patent and Copyright Acts give patent and copyright holders limited exclusive rights in intellectual property, the Sherman Act prohibits combinations or conspiracies that restrain trade and monopolization. Although firms possessing intellectual property generally exercise their statutory exclusionary rights without running afoul of the antitrust laws, conduct may plausibly be authorized by intellectual property law but forbidden by antitrust. In construing the two statutory schemes, federal courts have generally held that conduct authorized by the intellectual property laws, in the absence of some further inculpatory action, cannot form the basis for antitrust liability. The Ninth Circuit departed from …
Antitrust Problems In International Technology Transfers—United States V. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 648 F.2d 642 (9th Cir. 2981), Christina Marie Ager
Antitrust Problems In International Technology Transfers—United States V. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 648 F.2d 642 (9th Cir. 2981), Christina Marie Ager
Washington Law Review
In 1970 the Department of Justice brought an antitrust action against Westinghouse Electric Corporation and two Japanese corporations, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) (together Mitsubishi). The government alleged violations of section 1 of the Sherman Act. Since 1923 the defendants or their predecessors had a series of technology-sharing agreements under which Westinghouse granted licenses of its Japanese patents to Mitsubishi. It excluded its counterpart patents in the United States and Canada from the agreements. The government contended that Mitsubishi had become so dependent on Westinghouse technology because of the technology-sharing agreements that it could not …