Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

International Arbitration Of Sep Frand Royalties, Steven Pepe, Samuel Brenner, Michael Morales

Touro Law Review

Standard-essential patent royalty disputes have typically been litigated in U.S. federal district courts, but patent owners have recently started to file suit in courts across the globe, leading to issues of comity, anti-suit injunctions, and increased litigation costs. International arbitration provides a unique forum for parties to litigate these royalty disputes and avoid, or at least lessen the burden, of these issues. This Article explores the advantages and disadvantages of using international arbitration to resolve standard-essential patent royalty disputes.

A Closer Look At The "Eye" Test: The British Influence On Early American Design Patent Infringement Law, Mark D. Janis

IP Theory

The Supreme Court has asserted that “[t]he Patent Clause in our Constitution ‘was written against the backdrop’ of the English system.” That notion has a long lineage. In 1818, the author of an anonymous “Note on the Patent Laws,” widely assumed to be Justice Story, claimed that “[t]he patent acts of the United States are, in a great degree, founded on the principles and usages which have grown out of the English statute on the same subject.”

But these generalizations significantly overstate—and oversimplify—the influence of British law on the nascent American jurisprudence of patents. Early American jurists felt no reluctance …

Discovering Ebay's Impact On Copyright Injunctions Through Empirical Evidence, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson

Faculty Articles

This Article reports on new empirical evidence discrediting the widely held view that judges have resisted applying the Supreme Court’s teachings in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. about injunctive relief in copyright cases. That 2006 patent law decision ruled that courts should not automatically issue injunctions upon a finding of infringement; instead, plaintiffs must prove their entitlement to injunctive relief. eBay had a seismic impact on patent litigation and greatly reduced the threat that small infringements could be leveraged into billion-dollar settlements. Yet prior empirical work, at least one major copyright law treatise, and many articles assert that eBay had …

Hit The Road, Jack: The Auto Industry As The Next Vehicle For Predatory Infringement, Kristen Osenga

Law Faculty Publications

While patents, patent litigation, and patent pools have been part of the automotive industry since the late-1800s, the prevalence of technology covered by standards and accompanying standard essential patents (SEPs) is much more recent. Today’s smart cars and the widespread incorporation of telecommunication and Internet of Things standards in vehicles raise concerns about how well the automotive industry will be able to adapt to this new SEP-laden future. This article predicts that predatory infringement of SEPs for two related reasons. First, although some industries, such as telecommunications, have long dealt with SEPs, the incorporation of standardized technology is more recent …

Patent Prophylaxis: Expanding Access To Prep Through 28 U.S.C. § 1498, Jonathan A. Bell

William & Mary Law Review

Part I of this Note details the discovery of Truvada for PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] and the ongoing patent infringement litigation brought by HHS [United States Department of Health and Human Services], discusses the patents currently held by CDC and Gilead, and examines the shortcomings of infringement litigation as a means to expand access to the drug. Part II analyzes the mechanism of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act and discusses two previously attempted applications for the HIV-management drug ritonavir to demonstrate why march-in rights will always fail to expand access to life-saving medications or reduce costs to consumers. Part III …

The (Unnoticed) Revitalization Of The Doctrine Of Equivalents, Daryl Lim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Over the past century, few patent issues have been considered so often by the Supreme Court of the United States as the doctrine of equivalents (“DOE”). This judge-made rule deals with a question that lies at the heart of patent policy—what is the best way to define property rights in an invention? The doctrine gives patentees an opportunity to ensnare an accused device that does not literally infringe a patent claim if the accused device is substantially similar to each claim limitation. Patentees enjoy this advantage, but it comes at a cost to the public, who must face the …

Reconstruction Of The Reasonable Person Standard Under Chinese Patent Law, Weihong Yao, Robert H. Hu

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

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Resorbing Patent Law's Kessler Cat Into The General Law Of Preclusion, Dennis D. Crouch, Homayoon Rafatijo

Faculty Publications

It has become exceedingly common in our legal system that courts, in the guise of respect for precedent, compound upon errors. Legal precedents are written documents, but "[t]he reality we can put into words is never reality itself." As such, we seldom find a court decision that embodies the entire legal reality regarding the questions presented. In this respect, the legal system inherently suffers from a lack of what mathematicians call completeness. Each decision gives rise to countless inferences because what lower courts observe by reading the precedent is not the entire legal reality but an incomplete reality exposed to …

Treating Diagnostics: Protecting In Vitro Diagnostic Testing In An Uncertain § 101 Landscape, Emily Iroz Rich

Akron Law Review

Beyond question, medical diagnostic tests, they save lives. The diagnostic tests also contribute to the overall health of the U.S. economy. However, the current state of subject-matter eligibility for patent protection does not incentivize the research and development of these life-saving tools. Previous legislative and judicial efforts to fix subject-matter eligibility have failed. This article proposes a diagnostic patent act to allow the protection of in vitro diagnostic tests. The proposed diagnostic patent act would include safeguards to allow adequate access to fundamental research while incentivizing the return of investment to the patent holder. Safeguards would include exceptions to patent …

‘Substantial Portion’ Of A Patent: Quantitative Or Qualitative?, Matthew Rollin

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This Article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Life Technologies Corp., where the Court issued another requirement for patent infringement. Part II of this Article examines the text of the Patent Act and the history behind it. Part III further discusses the facts of Life Technologies Corp., to give more relevant background facts and history. Part IV focuses on the prior opinions of the case, including the district court’s ruling, appellate court’s decision, and the Supreme Court’s decision. Part V examines and concludes with the legal significance of Life Technologies Corp., the impact that it will have on future …

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Michigan Technology Law Review

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …

Patents For Sharing, Toshiko Takenaka

Michigan Technology Law Review

Spurred by the Internet, emerging technologies have changed the way commercial firms innovate and have made it possible for individuals to play an important role in that innovation. Producers in the Information Communication Technologies (ICT), and other sectors dealing with complex technologies with many separately patentable components, find it increasingly difficult to make products without infringing on patents held by others. Numerous overlapping patents often cover such products. Producers have developed a new way to use patents: as inclusive rights for sharing their technologies with others through cross-licensing and other private ordering arrangements in order to ensure the freedom to …

A Patent Reformist Supreme Court And Its Unearthed Precedent, Samuel F. Ernst

Publications

This paper examines the twenty-eight Supreme Court opinions overruling the Federal Circuit since 2000 and quantifies their rationales to discover that, while these reasons are often invoked, the Supreme Court’s most common rationale is that the Federal Circuit has disregarded or cabined its older precedent from before the 1982 creation of the Federal Circuit, from before the 1952 Patent Act, and even from before the 20th Century. The Court has relied on this rationale in twenty-one of the twenty-eight cases. The paper then seeks to probe beneath the surface level patterns to discover the deeper roots of the discord between …

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Cornell Law Review

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, like enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods LLC illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically …

The Substantial Identity Requirement Of Patent Infringement, Samuel F. Ernst

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Road To Marshall: Of Venue, Trolls, And The Eastern District Of Texas, Jesus Efren Cano

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Solving The Riddle! Bridging The Gap In The Federal Circuit’S Definition Of “Regular And Established Place Of Business” To Prevent Patent Trolls From Forum Shopping, Michael A. Morales

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Determining Enhanced Damages After Halo Electronics: Still A Struggle?, Veronica Corcoran

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

35 U.S.C. § 284 of the Patent Act allows district courts to use their discretion to award enhanced damages up to three times the amount found or assessed in the case of patent infringement. This Comment will consider how the Supreme court of the United States’ holding in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse electronics, Inc. changed the landscape of enhanced damages awards in light of willful infringement.

First, this Comment will examine the Federal Circuit’s approach that now embraces both an objective and subjective inquiry in determining enhanced damages, which may resolve the concern over the rigidity in the Seagate …

Patent Infringement As Trespass, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

The now-conventional account of patent law holds that infringement is a strict liability offense, meaning that intent is not an element of an infringement claim. This account heightens the apparent injustice of patent law's special knowledge problem, that as ambiguous descriptions of intangible resources, patent claims do not sufficiently make potential infringers aware of a patentee's right to exclude. Particularly in the age of so-called "patent thickets, " clusters of patents of variable merit which are indistinguishable from each other and from prior art, strict liability, or infringement seems rather hard.

These problems reflect a conceptual misunderstanding. When infringement is …

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Faculty Scholarship

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, such as enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically measure …

At&T V. Microsoft: Is This A Case Of Deepsouth Déjà Vu?, Christopher R. Rogers

Maine Law Review

It has been stated many times by various courts that the patent laws of the United States do not reach beyond the borders of the United States. In an age of expanding world commerce, the territorial reach of our patent laws has sometimes made it difficult for U.S. inventors to meaningfully protect their intellectual property. For example, the Supreme Court holding in Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp. opened up a loophole that allowed unlicensed U.S. manufacturers to essentially export patented inventions, thereby trampling on the patent rights of U.S. patent holders selling to foreign markets. The Deepsouth loophole has …

Adoption Of The Bayh-Dolye Act In Developed Countries: Added Presure For A Broad Research Exemption In The United States?, Michael S. Mireles

Maine Law Review

Numerous developed countries, most if not all members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Finland, have or are considering adopting legislation similar to the Bayh-Dole Act. These countries apparently believe that passage of legislation similar to the Bayh-Dole Act will lead to the transfer of government funded research results from the university laboratory to the marketplace and other economic activity. In the United States, the birthplace of the Bayh-Dole Act (the Act), it is not entirely clear whether its passage is the direct result …

The Cessation Of Innovation: An Inquiry Into Whether Congress Can And Should Strip The Supreme Court Of Its Appellate Jurisdiction To Entertain Patent Cases, Catherine Taylor

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Patents Really Limited To 20 Years?, Melody Wriz

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curieae 56 Professors Of Law And Economics In Support Of Petition Of Writ Of Certiorari, John R. Allison, Margo Bagley, James Bessen, Jeremy Bock, Daniel H. Brean, Michael A. Carrier, Michael W. Carroll, Bernard Chao, Tun-Jen Chiang, Colleen V. Chien, Andrew Chin, Robert Cook-Deegan, Md, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Dr. Dieter Ernst, Samuel F. Ernst, Robin C. Feldman, Lee Fleming, Brian Frye, William Gallagher, Shubha Ghosh, Eric Goldman, Bronwyn H. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Christian Helmers, Joachim Henkel, Susan Helper, Tim Holbrook, Herbert Hovenkamp, William Hubbard, Dr. Xavier Jaravel, Dennis S. Karjala, Peter Lee, Mark A. Lemley, David K. Levine, David S. Levine, Doug Lichtman, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Orly Lobel, Brian Love, Phil Malone, Michael J. Meurer, Dr. Shawn Miller, Matthew Mitchell, Susan Barbieri Montgomery, Sean Pager, Arti K. Rai, Jacob H. Rooksby, Jorge R. Roig, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson, Ana Santos Rutschman, Lea Bishop Shaver, Toshiko Takenaka, John L. Turner, Jennifer Urban, Eric Von Hippel

Andrew Chin

28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) provides that a defendant in a patent case may be sued where the defendant is incorporated or has a regular and established place of business and has infringed the patent. This Court made clear in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 223 (1957), that those were the only permissible venues for a patent case. But the Federal Circuit has rejected Fourco and the plain meaning of § 1400(b), instead permitting a patent plaintiff to file suit against a defendant anywhere there is personal jurisdiction over that defendant. The result has been rampant …

Brief Of Amici Curiae 56 Professors Of Law And Economics In Support Of Petition Of Writ Of Certiorari, John R. Allison, Margo Bagley, James Bessen, Jeremy Bock, Daniel H. Brean, Michael A. Carrier, Michael W. Carroll, Bernard Chao, Tun-Jen Chiang, Colleen V. Chien, Andrew Chin, Robert Cook-Deegan, Md, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Dr. Dieter Ernst, Samuel F. Ernst, Robin C. Feldman, Lee Fleming, Brian Frye, William Gallagher, Shubha Ghosh, Eric Goldman, Bronwyn H. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Christian Helmers, Joachim Henkel, Susan Helper, Tim Holbrook, Herbert Hovenkamp, William Hubbard, Dr. Xavier Jaravel, Dennis S. Karjala, Peter Lee, Mark A. Lemley, David K. Levine, David S. Levine, Doug Lichtman, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Orly Lobel, Brian Love, Phil Malone, Michael J. Meurer, Dr. Shawn Miller, Matthew Mitchell, Susan Barbieri Montgomery, Sean Pager, Arti K. Rai, Jacob H. Rooksby, Jorge R. Roig, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson, Ana Santos Rutschman, Lea Bishop Shaver, Toshiko Takenaka, John L. Turner, Jennifer Urban, Eric Von Hippel

Michael W. Carroll

28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) provides that a defendant in a patent case may be sued where the defendant is incorporated or has a regular and established place of business and has infringed the patent. This Court made clear in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 223 (1957), that those were the only permissible venues for a patent case. But the Federal Circuit has rejected Fourco and the plain meaning of § 1400(b), instead permitting a patent plaintiff to file suit against a defendant anywhere there is personal jurisdiction over that defendant. The result has been rampant …

Samsung V. Apple: Taking A Bite Out Of The Design Patent “Article Of Manufacture” Controversy, Elizabeth M. Gil

University of Miami Business Law Review

Smartphones have become a universal item. A smartphone is comprised of hundreds of thousands of patented inventions, many of which are design patents.1It is these design patents that are at the center of the highly-contested case of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Apple Inc., which involves three of the design patents within Apple’s iPhone. Beginning in 2011, Apple and Samsung have been in a seemingly never-ending litigious battle over these design patents with the case commencing in the district court, climbing up to the Supreme Court of the United States, and returning to the district court. It is this …

Causal Responsibility And Patent Infringement, Dmitry Karshtedt

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is not uncommon for multiple parties in the stream of commercemanufacturers, distributors, end users-to be involved in the infringement of a single patent. Yet courts continue to struggle with such scenarios. Attempts to deal with them-particularly when plaintiffs asserted so-called method patents, which cover specific "steps," or actions-have produced results that defy commonsense notions of legal responsibility. In method patent cases, the patentee must clear much higher legal hurdles to prevail against a manufacturer who designed and supplied an infringing device than against an end user who simply bought that device and operated it as intended. The manufacturer can …

Fixing Forum Selling, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

"Forum selling” is jurisdictional competition intended to attract litigants. While consensual forum selling may be beneficial, non-consensual forum selling is harmful because it encourages jurisdictions to adopt an inefficient pro-plaintiff bias. In the last 20 years, the Eastern District of Texas has adopted an aggressive and remarkably successful policy of non-consensual forum selling in patent infringement actions. In 2016, 44% of all patent infringement actions were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, and 93% of them were filed by patent assertion entities or “patent trolls.”

In December 2016, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TC Heartland v. Kraft, …