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Full-Text Articles in Law
Improving Patent Quality Through Post-Grant Claim Amendments: A Comparison Of European Opposition Proceedings And U.S. Post-Grant Proceedings, Jennifer Turchyn
Improving Patent Quality Through Post-Grant Claim Amendments: A Comparison Of European Opposition Proceedings And U.S. Post-Grant Proceedings, Jennifer Turchyn
Michigan Law Review
Congress enacted the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act to encourage innovation, strengthen U.S. patents, and achieve greater uniformity with foreign patent systems. The America Invents Act introduced two new post-grant patent validity proceedings: inter partes review and post-grant review. The new U.S. proceedings are similar to European opposition proceedings, but there are significant differences in the extent of the patent owner’s ability to amend claims, the patent’s claim construction, the patent owner’s evidentiary burden, and the procedural requirements. The U.S. proceedings result in a very limited opportunity for amendment and a high percentage of invalidated patents. In contrast, European opposition proceedings …
Unsettling Drug Patent Settlements: A Framework For Presumptive Illegality, Michael A. Carrier
Unsettling Drug Patent Settlements: A Framework For Presumptive Illegality, Michael A. Carrier
Michigan Law Review
A tidal wave of high drug prices has recently crashed across the U.S. economy. One of the primary culprits has been the increase in agreements by which brand-name drug manufacturers and generic firms have settled patent litigation. The framework for such agreements has been the Hatch-Waxman Act, which Congress enacted in 1984. One of the Act's goals was to provide incentives for generics to challenge brand-name patents. But brand firms have recently paid generics millions of dollars to drop their lawsuits and refrain from entering the market. These reverse-payment settlements threaten significant harm. Courts nonetheless have recently blessed them, explaining …
Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans
Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans
Michigan Law Review
Section 337 of the Tarif Act of 1930 empowers the United States International Trade Commission to investigate imports to ensure imports do not infringe on U.S. trademarks. The Commission permits patent, copyright, and trademark owners to notify the Commission of possibly infringing imports and to obtain exclusion orders that prevent importation of products that infringe their intellectual property. The total number of investigations increased from 1996 to 2005, yet the proportion of respondent defaults rose as well. The increase in defaults suggests there is some systemic difficulty in ensuring full participation. This Note argues that the res judicata effects of …
Trolling For Trolls: The Pitfalls Of The Emerging Market Competition Requirement For Permanent Injunctions In Patent Cases Post-Ebay, Benjamin H. Diessel
Trolling For Trolls: The Pitfalls Of The Emerging Market Competition Requirement For Permanent Injunctions In Patent Cases Post-Ebay, Benjamin H. Diessel
Michigan Law Review
In eBay v. MercExchange, a unanimous Supreme Court announced that a new four-factor test should be employed by district courts in determining whether to award an injunction or damages to an aggrieved party whose intellectual property has been infringed. In the context of permanent injunctions in patent cases, district courts have distorted the four-factor test resulting in a "market competition requirement." Under the new market competition requirement, success at obtaining an injunction is contingent upon a party demonstrating that it is a market competitor After consistent application in the first twenty-five district court cases post-eBay, the market competition requirement …
Should Patent Infringement Require Proof Of Copying?, Mark A. Lemley
Should Patent Infringement Require Proof Of Copying?, Mark A. Lemley
Michigan Law Review
Patent infringement is a strict liability offense. Patent law gives patent owners not just the right to prevent others from copying their ideas, but the power to control the use of their idea--even by those who independently develop a technology with no knowledge of the patent or the patentee. This is a power that exists nowhere else in intellectual property (IP) or real property law, but it is a one that patentees have had, with rare exceptions, since the inception of the Republic. In an important paper in the Michigan Law Review, Samson Vermont seeks to change this, arguing …
The Angel Is In The Big Picture: A Response To Lemley, Samson Vermont
The Angel Is In The Big Picture: A Response To Lemley, Samson Vermont
Michigan Law Review
An invention within close reach of multiple inventors differs from an invention within distant reach of a lone inventor. The differences between these two archetypes of invention -"reinventables" and "singletons"- remain unexploited under current U.S. law. Should we reform the law to exploit the differences? Mark Lemley and I agree that we should. To date, those economists who have closely examined the issue concur. What are the differences between reinventables and singletons? First, reinventables can be brought into existence with incentives of lower magnitude. This suggests that we can obtain reinventables at a lower price than we currently pay-i.e., with …
Mark(Et)Ing Nondiscrimination: Privatizing Enda With A Certification Mark, Ian Ayres, Jennifer Gerarda Brown
Mark(Et)Ing Nondiscrimination: Privatizing Enda With A Certification Mark, Ian Ayres, Jennifer Gerarda Brown
Michigan Law Review
People in the United States strongly support the simple idea that employers should not discriminate against gays and lesbians. In a 2003 Gallup poll, eighty-eight percent of respondents said that "homosexuals should . . . have equal rights in terms of job opportunities." Even prominent social conservatives- such as George W. Bush-give lip service to the idea that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong. But gay rights advocates have achieved only modest legal reform on this issue. Seventeen states have prohibited employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. A seemingly modest bill, the Employment Non Discrimination Act …
Pathological Patenting: The Pto As Cause Or Cure, Rochelle Dreyfuss
Pathological Patenting: The Pto As Cause Or Cure, Rochelle Dreyfuss
Michigan Law Review
The Patent Act was last revised in 1952. The hydrogen bomb was exploded that year, vividly demonstrating the power of the nucleus; in the ensuing postwar period, the Next Big Thing was clearly the molecule. Novel compounds were synthesized in the hopes of finding new medicines; solid-state devices exploited the special characteristics of germanium and other semiconductors; as investments in polymer chemistry soared, advice to the college graduate soon boiled down to "one word ... just one word[:] ... Plastics." Over the next half-century, things changed dramatically. "Better living through chemistry" has begun to sound dated (if not sinister). Genomics …
Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick
Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick
Michigan Law Review
This Note will show that one can read Elsner broadly to encompass both plant-type and widget-type inventions, and that applying Elsner to both plants and widgets is within the current statutory framework and case law. Such a reading would change the § 102 bar for inventions patentable under § 10i29 (hereinafter referred to as "widgets") as well as for plants. Part I of this Note argues that congressional sources require a flexible test-one that does not prejudice any objects under the Patent Act. Part II discusses the judicial interpretation of the Patent Act prior to Elsner in order to argue …
Judgments - Propriety Of Finding That A Nonparty Conducted The Defense, David N. Mills
Judgments - Propriety Of Finding That A Nonparty Conducted The Defense, David N. Mills
Michigan Law Review
A patent infringement suit against a distributor was dismissed on the ground that plaintiff's patents were invalid. A finding was incorporated in the judgment that the defense had been "openly and avowedly conducted" by the manufacturer of the article distributed by defendant. Plaintiff objected that the finding "on its face would be a valid estoppel" in case plaintiff later wished to sue the manufacturer in a separate suit. Held, that plaintiff was entitled to have the finding deleted from the judgment since the finding was not necessary to a disposition of the issues between plaintiff and defendant. Minneapolis- Honeywell …
Rescission - Constructive Trusts - Tracing Misappropriated Funds, Eugene T. Kinder
Rescission - Constructive Trusts - Tracing Misappropriated Funds, Eugene T. Kinder
Michigan Law Review
Defendant, president of plaintiff corporation, misappropriated over $1,000,000 in corporate funds, investing $79,000 thereof in government bonds. With the proceeds from these bonds, defendant set up two corporations, all the capital stock of which was owned by defendant's son and was purchased with plaintiff's money. One Greenslade was hired by defendant, and paid with a part of the misappropriated funds, to experiment with locomotive staybolt testing devices. As a result of the experimentation, Greenslade invented and patented several devices, transferring ownership thereof to one of the two corporations. In a prior action, brought without knowledge of the disposition of the …
Treaties-Scope Of Treaty--Making Power--When Treaties Are Self-Executing
Treaties-Scope Of Treaty--Making Power--When Treaties Are Self-Executing
Michigan Law Review
The scope of the treaty-making power, and the considerations that govern in determining when a treaty is self-executing and when it requires subsequent legislation to make its terms effective, received an interesting discussion in a recent case decided in the United States District Court of the District of Maryland.
Curb-Stone Patent Opinions, Dwight B. Cheever
Curb-Stone Patent Opinions, Dwight B. Cheever
Michigan Law Review
Having been asked almost every day for the last nine years for offhand-commonly called curb-stone-opinions on one or more of certain very elementary propositions in Patent Law, it has occurred to me that perhaps a discussion of some of these questions would be of more practical value to the readers of this magazine than a comprehensive discussion of a more elaborate subject.