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Judicial Capacities And Patent Claim Construction: An Ordinary Reader Standard, Greg Reilly May 2014

Judicial Capacities And Patent Claim Construction: An Ordinary Reader Standard, Greg Reilly

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Patent claim construction is a mess. The Federal Circuit’s failure to provide adequate guidance has created significant problems for the patent system. The problems with claim construction result from the Federal Circuit’s inability to resolve whether claim terms should be given (1) the general, acontextual meaning they would have to a skilled person in the field; (2) the specific meaning they have in the context of the patent; or (3) some combination of the two. The claim construction debate largely overlooks the generalist judges who must implement claim construction. This Article fills that gap, concluding that existing approaches are difficult, …


Bargaining In The Shadow Of Rate-Setting Courts, Daniel A. Crane Jan 2009

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Rate-Setting Courts, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Judges will tell you that they are comparatively poor rate regulators. The specialized, technical competence and supervisory capacity that public utilities commissions enjoy are usually absent from judicial chambers. Nonetheless, when granting antitrust remedies-particularly remedies for monopolistic abuse of intellectual property-courts sometimes purport to act as rate regulators for the licensing or sale of the defendant's assets. At the outset, we should distinguish between two forms ofjudicial rate setting. In one form, a court (or the FTC in its adjudicative capacity) grants a compulsory license and sets a specific rate as part of a final judgment or an order. The …


Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz Nov 2008

Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

This Article examines whether U.S. district court judges improve their skills at patent claim construction with experience, including the experience of having their own cases reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In theory, higher courts teach doctrine to lower courts via judicial decisions, and lower courts learn from these decisions. This Article tests the teaching-and-learning premise on the issue of claim construction in the realities of patent litigation. While others have shown that the Federal Circuit reverses a large percentage of lower court claim constructions, no one has analyzed whether judges with more claim construction appeal …


Judges, Juries, And Patent Cases - An Emprical Peek Inside The Black Box, Kimberly A. Moore Nov 2000

Judges, Juries, And Patent Cases - An Emprical Peek Inside The Black Box, Kimberly A. Moore

Michigan Law Review

The frequency with which juries participate in patent litigation has skyrocketed recently. At the same time, there is a popular perception that the increasing complexity of technology being patented (especially in the electronic, computer software, biological and chemical fields) has made patent trials extremely difficult for lay juries to understand. These developments have sparked extensive scholarly debate and increasing skepticism regarding the role of juries in patent cases. Juries have participated in some aspects of patent litigation since the enactment of the first patent statute in 1790, which provided for "such damages as shall be assessed by a jury." The …


Defining Computer Program Parts Under Learned Hand's Abstractions Test In Software Copyright Infringement Cases, John W.L. Ogilive Dec 1992

Defining Computer Program Parts Under Learned Hand's Abstractions Test In Software Copyright Infringement Cases, John W.L. Ogilive

Michigan Law Review

This Note proposes a set of computer program part definitions that develop Learned Hand's abstractions test to make it more useful in software infringement cases. The Note takes no position on the proper scope of protection for software under copyright law, but argues that no consensus is possible on which program parts deserve copyright protection until courts recognize that computer programs are composed of components whose definition lies beyond judicial control. Program parts defined in conclusory legal terms will never provide a stable basis for reasoned debate over the conclusions presumed in the definitions.