Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Cultural Cognition Of Patents, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette

IP Theory

Simply making empirical progress is not always enough to influence policy, as demonstrated by the polarized public discourse over issues ranging from climate change to gun control. The current discourse over patents appears to have a similar pathology, in which cultural values — such as respect for strong property rights or concern about limiting access to knowledge — shape priors and affect the weight given to new information, such that advocates and policymakers on both sides of the patent wars often fail to acknowledge the ambiguity of existing evidence. This Essay suggests that the “cultural cognition” framework might help scholars …

Generic Entry Jujitsu: Innovation And Quality In Drug Manufacturing, W. Nicholson Price Ii

IP Theory

The manufacturing side of the pharmaceutical industry has been neglected in innovation theory and policy, with the unfortunate result of stagnant manufacturing techniques driving major problems for the healthcare system. This innovation failure has roots in ineffective intellectual property incentives and high regulatory hurdles to innovative change. Changes in pure regulation or intellectual property incentives have significant potential to help the innovation deficit, but are not the only possibility for change. A relatively minor regulatory change could harness the powerful dynamics of pioneer/generic competition surrounding generic drug market entry. If pioneer firms were permitted to make label claims committing to …

Duty And Control In Intermediary Copyright Liability: An Australian Perspective, Kylie Pappalardo

IP Theory

In the internet age, copyright owners are increasingly looking to online intermediaries to take steps to prevent copyright infringement. Sometimes these intermediaries are closely tied to the acts of infringement; sometimes – as in the case of ISPs – they are not. In 2012, the Australian High Court decided the Roadshow Films v iiNet case, in which it held that an Australian ISP was not liable under copyright’s authorization doctrine, which asks whether the intermediary has sanctioned, approved or countenanced the infringement. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 directs a court to consider, in these situations, whether the intermediary had the …

A Comparative Study Of Gmo Labeling And Liability Systems In The Us, Eu, And South Korea: The Circumstances And A Future Potential For Harmonization, Moonsook Park

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

With the remarkable development of GMOs, GMO trade has also increased. The different attitudes on GMOs among the countries all over the world, specifically the US, EU, and South Korea, have the potential to create international trade conflicts. In order to mediate the conflicts, reasonable labeling and liability systems need to be established to prevent potential GMO risks. The Biosafety Protocol regarding the transboundary movement of GMOs exists to resolve such tensions, but it fails to sufficiently solve the problems and provide clear regulations concerning GMO labeling and liability systems.

A successful GMO labeling and liability system should emphasize the …

Will There Be A Neurolaw Revolution?, Adam Kolber

Indiana Law Journal

The central debate in the field of neurolaw has focused on two claims. Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen argue that we do not have free will and that advances in neuroscience will eventually lead us to stop blaming people for their actions. Stephen Morse, by contrast, argues that we have free will and that the kind of advances Greene and Cohen envision will not and should not affect the law. I argue that neither side has persuasively made the case for or against a revolution in the way the law treats responsibility.

There will, however, be a neurolaw revolution of …

The (Data Privacy) Law Hasn't Even Checked In When Technology Takes Off, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Virtual Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason J. Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Industrial design is migrating to the virtual world, and the design patent system is migrating with it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already granted several thousand design patents on virtual designs, patents that cover the designs of graphical user interfaces for smartphones, tablets, and other products, as well as the designs of icons or other artifacts of various virtual environments. Many more such design patent applications are pending; in fact, U.S. design patent applications for virtual designs represent one of the fastest growing forms of design subject matter at the USPTO.

Our project is the first comprehensive …

Power And Governance In Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent influx of patent pools, research consortia, and similar cooperative groups led by companies at the vanguard of American innovation has raised a pressing question: How does collective action influence the incentive to innovate? This question hinges on how patent pools are internally governed — a topic that has not been deeply examined by legal scholars. Through an original study of fifty-two private agreements, this Article pulls back the veil on patent licensing collectives to examine whether such organizations are designed to encourage long-term innovation.

This study draws on collective patent license agreements spanning the years 1856 to 2013 …

Disclosing Big Data, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article reveals that the law is failing to adequately encourage producers of “big data” to disclose their most innovative work to the public. “Big data” refers to a new industrial and scientific phenomenon that holds the potential to transform diverse industries—from medicine, to energy, to online services. At the heart of this phenomenon are innovative and complex practices by which experts shape featureless digital records into valuable information products. The fact that these big data practices are unlikely to be widely disclosed to the public is worrisome for familiar reasons: the law generally prefers to induce technological disclosure in …