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Patent Exhaustion And Federalism: A Historical Note, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Apr 2016

Patent Exhaustion And Federalism: A Historical Note, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay, written as a response to John F. Duffy and Richard Hynes, Statutory Domain and the Commercial Law of Intellectual Property, 102 VA. L. REV. 1 (2016), argues that the patent exhaustion (first sale) doctrine developed as a creature of federalism, intended to divide the line between the law of patents, which by that time had become exclusively federal, and the law of patented things, which were governed by the states. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century courts were explicit on the point, in decisions stretching from the 1850s well into the twentieth century.

By the second half of …


North Carolina State Board Of Dental Examiners V. Ftc: Aligning Antitrust Law With Commerce Clause Jurisprudence Through A Natural Shift Of State-Federal Balance Of Power, Marie Forney Jan 2016

North Carolina State Board Of Dental Examiners V. Ftc: Aligning Antitrust Law With Commerce Clause Jurisprudence Through A Natural Shift Of State-Federal Balance Of Power, Marie Forney

Indiana Law Journal

The Supreme Court’s holding in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC (NC Dental)1 in February 2015 demonstrates a natural shift in the balance of power from the states to the national government. As the country’s interstate and international economy has become more integrated, federal authority has likewise expanded.2 And although the federalism dichotomy has undergone periodic back-and-forth “swings” since the nation’s founding, the end result has been a net increase in federal power. NC Dental exemplifies this trend toward increasing national au-thority through the organic development of interstate commerce.