Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

A Century Of Patent Litigation In Perspective, Ron D. Katznelson

Ron D. Katznelson

When comparing patent litigation rates or “rarity” across decades, one must take into account the proportion to the actual scale of commercial activities that give rise to patent disputes. Such normalizing scales are preferably national metrics of commercial activity such as (a) the number of patents issued in the year, (b) the total number of patents in force over which disputes may arise, (c) the total number of Federal civil suits, or (d) the economic scale of the Gross National Product (GDP) in real dollars. This paper marshals for the first time information on all patent litigation in Federal district …

On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

The idea of ominous technologies that put human individuals or parts of their bodies under someone else's control has been stirring emotions and terrifying people for centuries. It was a recent offshoot of this idea--the notion of “patenting humans”--that mobilized certain members of Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the issuance of patent claims “directed to or encompassing a human organism.” The values underlying this legislation may well have been agreeable, even admirable. Yet, the actual motivation for it was misguided; its execution, deeply flawed; its potential outcomes, hazardous

This Article reviews the history and background of this prohibition. It fleshes …

Intellectual Property And Copyrights, Sherif K. Shaheen Prof.

sherif k. shaheen Prof.

No abstract provided.

Essential Facilities Doctrine And China’S Anti-Monopoly Law, Yong Huang, Elizabeth Xiao-Ru Wang, Xin Roger Zhang

Elizabeth Xiao-Ru Wang

No abstract provided.

Short-Circuiting Contract Law: The Federal Circuit's Contract Law Jurisprudence And Intellectual Property Federalism, Shubha Ghosh

Shubha Ghosh

The Federal Circuit was established in 1982 as an appellate court with limited jurisdiction over patent claims. However, the Federal Circuit has used this limited jurisdiction to expand its reach into contract law, developing a federal common law of contract. Given the growing importance of patent litigation in the past three decades, this creation of an independent body of contract law creates uncertainty in transactions involving patents. This troublesome development received attention in Stanford v Roche, a 2011 Supreme Court decision upholding the Federal Circuit's invalidation of a patent assignment to Stanford University. This Article documents the development of …

The Fashion Lottery: Cooperative Innovation In Stochastic Markets, Jonathan Barnett, Gilles Grolleau, Sana El Harbi

Jonathan M Barnett

The fashion market is an anomaly: innovation is vigorous but original producers are substantially unprotected against imitation, which proliferates under an incomplete property regime consisting of strong trademark protections and weak design protections. We account for this anomaly through a “cooperative innovation” model where producers prefer an incomplete property regime that permits some imitation to alternative regimes that permit no imitation or all imitation, independent of budget constraints. A property regime that permits positive but limited levels of imitation operates as a form of group insurance that alleviates the risk of recoupment failure in a market characterized by demand uncertainty, …

The Host's Dilemma: Strategic Forfeiture In Platform Markets For Informational Goods, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

Voluntary forfeiture of intellectual assets—often, exceptionally valuable assets--is surprisingly widespread in information technology markets. A simple economic rationale can account for these practices. By giving away access to core technologies, a platform holder commits against expropriating (and thereby induces) user investments that support platform value. To generate revenues that cover development and maintenance costs, the platform holder must regulate access to other goods and services within the total consumption bundle. The tradeoff between forfeiting access (to induce adoption) and regulating access (to recover costs) anticipates the substantial convergence of open and closed innovation models. Organizational patterns in the software and …

Intellectual Property As A Law Of Organization, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

The incentive thesis for patents is challenged by the existence of alternative means by which firms can capture returns on innovation. Taking into account patent alternatives yields a robust reformulation of the incentive thesis as mediated by organizational form. Patents enable innovators to make efficient selections of firm scope by transacting with least-cost suppliers of commercialization inputs. These expanded transactional opportunities reduce the minimum size of the market into which any innovator—or the supplier of any other technological or production input—can attempt entry. Disaggregation of the innovation and commercialization process then induces the formation of secondary markets in disembodied technology …

Property As Process: How Innovation Markets Select Innovation Regimes, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

It is commonly asserted that innovation markets suffer from excessive intellectualproperty protections, which in turn stifle output. But empirical inquiries can neither confirm nor deny this assertion. Under the “agnostic” assumption that we cannot assess directly whether intellectual-property coverage is excessive, an alternative query is proposed: can the market assess if any “propertization outcome” is excessive and then undertake actions to yield a socially preferable outcome? Grounded in the “bottom up” methodology of new institutional economics, this process-based approach takes the view that innovator populations make rent-seeking investments that continuously “select” among a range of “innovation regimes” that trade off …

The Evolution Of Intellectual Property Protections In The People’S Republic Of China: Is There An Enforcement Problem?, William Mcguire, Michael Wotherspoon

William McGuire

No abstract provided.

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Gretchen Rae Beach

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Introduction To Marshall Digital Scholar/Everything You Thought You Knew About Copyright, Jingping Zhang, Monica Brooks, Paris E. Webb, Larry Sheret

Monica Brooks

Copyright Primer: demystifying the law and best practices for librarians. Ignorance of the law is no longer acceptable and individuals can now be assessed astronomically high statutory damages per infringement. Join us for a frank and informative discussion regarding current copyright law and application in your library when working with digital publisher content. We don’t pretend to have all the answers but our team will share our MDS workflow for securing permissions for inclusion in the institutional repository for public access

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Monica Brooks

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Thomas Walker

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Introduction To Marshall Digital Scholar/Everything You Thought You Knew About Copyright, Jingping Zhang, Monica Brooks, Paris E. Webb, Larry Sheret

Paris Webb

Copyright Primer: demystifying the law and best practices for librarians. Ignorance of the law is no longer acceptable and individuals can now be assessed astronomically high statutory damages per infringement. Join us for a frank and informative discussion regarding current copyright law and application in your library when working with digital publisher content. We don’t pretend to have all the answers but our team will share our MDS workflow for securing permissions for inclusion in the institutional repository for public access

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Nat DeBruin

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Paris Webb

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Introduction To Marshall Digital Scholar/Everything You Thought You Knew About Copyright, Jingping Zhang, Monica Brooks, Paris E. Webb, Larry Sheret

Jingping Zhang

Copyright Primer: demystifying the law and best practices for librarians. Ignorance of the law is no longer acceptable and individuals can now be assessed astronomically high statutory damages per infringement. Join us for a frank and informative discussion regarding current copyright law and application in your library when working with digital publisher content. We don’t pretend to have all the answers but our team will share our MDS workflow for securing permissions for inclusion in the institutional repository for public access

Irresistable: How An Ir (Institutional Repository) Can Improve Library Collections While Preserving The Past, Monica Brooks, David Evans, Tim Tamminga, Jingping Zhang, Gretchen Beach, Nat Debruin, Larry Sheret, Thomas L. Walker Ii, Paris E. Webb

Jingping Zhang

Marshall University’s IR team will discuss the creation, progress, and benefits of the Marshall Digital Scholar, an online institutional repository. There will be time for libraries, large and small, to ask questions about digital collecting and digital projects.

Patent Assertion Entities & Privateers: Economic Harms To Innovation And Competition, Robert G. Harris

Robert G Harris

This paper addresses the problems of aggressive rent-seeking activities by patent assertion entities (PAEs) and privateers. Section II explains why aggressive patent assertion is especially problematic in patent thick products and systems (such as computers, smartphones and software), and why technological developments have increased the number and “density” of patent thickets. Section III addresses the fundamental differences in the strategic positions and interests of practicing entities and PAEs, and explains why those differences affect the conduct of PAEs and increase the opportunities for, and economic harm caused by, their rent-seeking conduct and efforts to engage in patent hold-up. Section IV …

Patent Assertion Entities & Privateers: Economic Harms To Innovation & Competition, Robert G. Harris

Robert G Harris

This paper addresses the problems of aggressive rent-seeking activities by patent assertion entities (PAEs) and privateers. Section II explains why aggressive patent assertion is especially problematic in patent thick products and systems (such as computers, smartphones and software), and why technological developments have increased the number and “density” of patent thickets. Section III addresses the fundamental differences in the strategic positions and interests of practicing entities and PAEs, and explains why those differences affect the conduct of PAEs and increase the opportunities for, and economic harm caused by, their rent-seeking conduct and efforts to engage in patent hold-up. Section IV …

Current Realities Of Collaborative Intellectual Property In Africa, Jeremy De Beer, Chidi Oguamanam, Tobias Schonwetter, Chris Armstrong

Jeremy de Beer

No abstract provided.

Innovation & Intellectual Property: Collaborative Dynamics In Africa

Jeremy de Beer

No abstract provided.

Aesthetic Functionality And Genericism, Charles E. Colman

Charles E. Colman

This presentation, the basis for a working article, begins by positing that U.S. trademark law's denial of exclusive rights in "generic" words and phrases is, in essence, a proxy for what might be called "linguistic functionality." In other words, the doctrine of genericism is simply one iteration of trademark law's general principle that no one may claim exclusive rights where recognition of such rights would produce anticompetitive results. Unfortunately, when it comes to non-word marks -- and perhaps most notably, product-design "trade dress" -- courts have neglected to establish a uniform, coherent, and fully theorized test for evaluating "genericism." The …

Frameworks For Analysing African Innovation: Entrepreneurship, The Informal Economy And Intellectual Property, Jeremy De Beer, Izabella Sowa, Kristen Holman

Jeremy de Beer

This chapter reviews conceptual frameworks to understand and measure innovation, and then outlines links between innovation and the concepts of entrepreneurship, the informal economy (IE) and intellectual property (IP). The review suggests that the time is ripe for African policy-makers to seek more holistic approaches to facilitating innovation and, in turn, to fostering socio-economic development in African nations.

Indigenous Knowledge, Sam Grey

Sam Grey

Indigenous knowledge (IK) includes the expressions, practices, beliefs, understandings, insights, and experiences of Indigenous groups, generated over centuries of profound interaction with a particular territory. Its iterations and mechanisms are unique to each community, even where it shares certain features across groups by virtue of being embedded in a wider, common culture. In all locations IK is the foundation of Indigenous governance, ecological stewardship, social, ethical, linguistic, spiritual, medical, food, and economic systems, so that the continual production and reproduction of local, land-based knowledge is the basis of Indigenous identity and sense of place in the world, as well as …