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Full-Text Articles in Law
Explaining The ‘Unpredictable’: An Empirical Analysis Of U.S. Patent Infringement Awards, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan Hillel
Explaining The ‘Unpredictable’: An Empirical Analysis Of U.S. Patent Infringement Awards, Samantha Zyontz, Michael J. Mazzeo, Jonathan Hillel
Faculty Scholarship
Patent infringement awards are commonly thought to be unpredictable, which raises concerns that patents can lead to unjust enrichment and impede the progress of innovation. We investigate the unpredictability of patent damages by conducting a large-scale econometric analysis of award values. We begin by analyzing the outcomes of 340 cases decided in US federal courts between 1995 and 2008 in which infringement was found and damages were awarded. Our data include the amount awarded, along with information about the litigants, case specifics and economic value of the patents-at-issue. Using these data, we construct an econometric model that explains over 75% …
Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach
Reclaiming Copyright From The Outside In: What The Downfall Hitler Meme Means For Transformative Works, Fair Use, And Parody, Aaron Schwabach
Faculty Scholarship
¶Continuing advances in consumer information technology have made video editing, once difficult, into a relatively simple matter. The average consumer can easily create and edit videos, and post them online. Inevitably many of these posted videos incorporate existing copyrighted content, raising questions of infringement, derivative versus transformative use, fair use, and parody.¶ ¶This article looks at several such works, with its main focus on one category of examples: the Downfall Hitler meme. Downfall Hitler videos take as their starting point a particular sequence - Hitler's breakdown rant - from the 2004 German film Der Untergang [Downfall in the US]. The …
Patent Invalidity Versus Noninfringement, Roger Allen Ford
Patent Invalidity Versus Noninfringement, Roger Allen Ford
Law Faculty Scholarship
Most patent scholars agree that the Patent and Trademark Office grants too many invalid patents and that these patents impose a significant tax upon industry and technological innovation. Although policymakers and scholars have proposed various ways to address this problem, including better ex ante review by patent examiners and various forms of ex post administrative review, district courts invalidating patents in litigation remain a core defense against bad patents. This article analyzes a previously unidentified impediment to the use of district courts to invalidate patents. Nearly every patent lawsuit rises or falls on one of two defenses: invalidity or noninfringement. …
Safe Harbor For The Innocent Infringer In The Digital Age, Tonya M. Evans
Safe Harbor For The Innocent Infringer In The Digital Age, Tonya M. Evans
Law Faculty Scholarship
The primary goal of this Article is three-fold: (1) to explore the role of the innocent infringer archetype historically and in the digital age; (2) to highlight the tension between customary and generally accepted online uses and copyright law that compromise efficient use of technology and progress of the digital technologies, the Internet, and society at large; and (3) to offer a legislative fix in the form of safe harbor for direct innocent infringers. Such an exemption seems not only more efficient but also more just in the online environment where unwitting infringement for the average copyright consumer is far …
Ip Injury And The Institutions Of Patent Law, Paul Gugliuzza
Ip Injury And The Institutions Of Patent Law, Paul Gugliuzza
Faculty Scholarship
This paper reviews Creation Without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation, the pathbreaking book by Christina Bohannan and Herbert Hovenkamp (Oxford Univ. Press 2012). The Review begins by summarizing the book’s descriptive insights and analyzing one of its important normative proposals: the adoption of an IP injury requirement. This requirement would demand that infringement plaintiffs prove -- before obtaining damages or an injunction -- an injury to the incentive to innovate. After explaining how this requirement is easy to justify under governing law and is largely consistent with recent Supreme Court decisions in the field of patent law, the …
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Articles & Chapters
Criminal and civil law differ greatly in their use of the element of intent. The purposes of intent in each legal system are tailored to effectuate very different goals. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S. Ct. 2060 (2011), however, imported a criminal concept of intent — willful blindness — into the statute for patent infringement, a civil offense, despite these differences. This importation of a criminal law concept of intent into the patent statute is novel and calls for examination. This Article compares the purposes behind intent in criminal law with the …