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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee
The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee
Michigan Law Review
Although tensions between universality and exceptionalism apply throughout law, they are particularly pronounced in patent law, a field that deals with highly technical subject matter. This Article explores these tensions by investigating an underappreciated descriptive theory of Supreme Court patent jurisprudence. Significantly extending previous scholarship, it argues that the Court’s recent decisions reflect a project of eliminating “patent exceptionalism” and assimilating patent doctrine to general legal principles (or, more precisely, to what the Court frames as general legal principles). Among other motivations, this trend responds to rather exceptional patent doctrine emanating from the Federal Circuit in areas as varied as …
Exclusion Confusion? A Defense Of The Federal Circuit's Specific Exclusion Jurisprudence, Peter Curtis Magic
Exclusion Confusion? A Defense Of The Federal Circuit's Specific Exclusion Jurisprudence, Peter Curtis Magic
Michigan Law Review
Specific exclusion has become a controversial limitation on the doctrine of equivalents, which is itself an essential and controversial area of patent law. The doctrine of equivalents allows a patentee to successfully claim infringement against devices that are outside of the literal reach of the language used by the patentee in her patent to describe what she claims as her invention. The Supreme Court has prescribed some of the outer limits of the doctrine of equivalents and articulated the underlying policy concerns that inform its analysis-noting that courts should balance protection of the patentee's intellectual property with the public's reasonable …