Business Commons^™

Did The America Invents Act Change University Technology Transfer?, Cynthia L. Dahl

All Faculty Scholarship

University technology transfer offices (TTOs) are the gatekeepers to groundbreaking innovations sparked in research laboratories around the U.S. With a business model reliant on patenting and licensing out for commercialization, TTOs were positioned for upheaval when the America Invents Act (AIA) transformed U.S. patent law in 2011. Now almost ten years later, this article examines the AIA’s actual effects on this patent-centric industry. It focuses on the five key areas of most interest to TTOs: i) first to file priority; ii) broadening of the universe of prior art; iii) carve-out to the prior commercial use defense; iv) micro-entity fees; and …

Uncertainty > Risk: Lessons For Legal Thought From The Insurance Runoff Market, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Insurance ideas inform legal thought: from tort law, to health law and financial services regulation, to theories of distributive justice. Within that thought, insurance is conceived as an ideal type in which insurers distribute determinable risks through contracts that fix the parties’ obligations in advance. This ideal type has normative appeal, among other reasons because it explains how tort law might achieve in practice the objectives of tort theory. This ideal type also supports a restrictive vision of liability-based regulation that opposes expansions and supports cutbacks, on the grounds that uncertainty poses an existential threat to insurance markets.

Prior work …