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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law
America's First Patents, Michael Risch
America's First Patents, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
Courts and commentators vigorously debate early American patent history because of a spotty documentary record. To fill these gaps, scholars have examined the adoption of the Intellectual Property Clause of the Constitution, correspondence, dictionaries, and British and colonial case law. But there is one largely ignored body of information — the content of early patents themselves. While many debate what the founders thought, no one asks what early inventors thought — and those thoughts are telling. This Article is the first comprehensive examination of how early inventors and their patents should inform our current thoughts about the patent system. To …
Ip And Entrepreneurship In An Evolving Economy: A Case Study, Michael Risch
Ip And Entrepreneurship In An Evolving Economy: A Case Study, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
What if you built an intellectual property clinic and hardly anyone came? This brief book chapter is a case study of the first two years of a new entrepreneurship law clinic in an evolving economy: West Virginia. While the clinic had entrepreneurial clients, those clients had developed little intellectual property. This chapter takes a closer look at the chicken-and-egg problem of knowledge development in an evolving economy, and concludes that law clinics can only support IP growth - they cannot create it on their own. The chapter then generalizes from the experience to suggest ways that law clinics can support …
A Failure Of Uniform Laws?, Michael Risch
A Failure Of Uniform Laws?, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
The Uniform Trade Secrets Act, adopted in forty-six states over 30 years, illustrates an important purpose of uniform laws: allowing states to adopt sister-state statutory interpretation when they enact the uniform statute. The case law of each UTSA state should theoretically apply in every other state adopting it, which provides an important benefit for small states that do not have enough litigation activity to generate their own substantial trade secret case law. This essay tests this purpose. It examines one small state’s opinions to see how much uniformity the UTSA provides. The results are somewhat surprising: the test state’s courts …
Forward To The Past, Michael Risch
Forward To The Past, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
The Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos - banning all patents claiming ‘‘abstract ideas,’’ but refusing to categorically bar any particular type of patent - represents a return to the Court’s past patentable subject matter jurisprudence. In so returning, the Court determined that business methods could potentially be patentable. This Supreme Court Review article discusses what is essentially a restart: lower courts and the PTO must remake the law using the same precedent that led to the rigid rules rejected by the Court in Bilski. Part I discusses Mr. Bilski’s patent application and the Court’s ruling that it is …
Virtual Third Parties, Michael Risch
Virtual Third Parties, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
In virtual worlds, where 20 million people spend $200 million each year, rules of life are governed by contract, and three-party transactions are ubiquitous; every exchange of virtual cash, property, sound, pictures, and even conversation introduces a third party into the contractual relationship between user and virtual-world provider. Whenever a contract affects a non-party, the third-party beneficiary ("TPB") doctrine might apply; to date, however, the practical and theoretical boundaries of this important doctrine's application to virtual worlds have yet to be explored, perhaps because of an overly narrow doctrinal conception. Many states have loosened TPB requirements somewhat; most have adopted …
Virtual Rule Of Law, Michael Risch
Virtual Rule Of Law, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
This article, which follows a presentation at the West Virginia Law Review Digital Entrepreneurship Symposium, is the first to consider whether virtual worlds provide a rule of law that sets expectations for virtual business. Many consider the rule of law a catalyst for economic development, and there is reason to believe that it will be equally important in virtual economies, despite differences from the real world. As more people turn to virtual worlds to earn a livelihood, the rule of law will become prominent in encouraging investments in virtual business. The article finds – unsurprisingly – that virtual worlds now …