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Intellectual Property Law

Selected Works

2007

Patent

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Failure Of Public Notice In Patent Prosecution, Michael Risch Dec 2006

The Failure Of Public Notice In Patent Prosecution, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Patents often contain technical information intertwined with legal meaning, and inventions are often difficult to describe in words. Despite complex interpretive rules, patent law has failed in one of its essential missions - giving those who need to read patents the ability to understand the scope of a patent's claims in a consistent and predictable manner. As a result, those who rely on patents - patentees, potential and actual licensees, potential and actual defendants, future patent applicants, courts, and even the Patent and Trademark Office - may find it difficult or impossible to discern the metes and bounds of any …

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Why Do We Have Trade Secrets?, Michael Risch Dec 2006

Why Do We Have Trade Secrets?, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Trade secrets are arguably the most important and most litigated form of intellectual property, yet very little has been written that justifies their existence, perhaps because they differ so much from other forms of intellectual property. This article explores the history of trade secret law in the United States and examines why it is that every state has opted to protect secret information, even though such protection is antithetical to the policies of access associated with patent law and non-protection of 'facts' associated with copyright law. In this article, I examine four potential ways to justify trade secret law. First, …

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Keeping Time Machines And Teleporters In The Public Domain: Fiction As Prior Art For Patent Examination, Daniel Harris Brean Dec 2006

Keeping Time Machines And Teleporters In The Public Domain: Fiction As Prior Art For Patent Examination, Daniel Harris Brean

Daniel Harris Brean

Works of fiction sometimes contain disclosures of inventions that operate as a bar to patentability, preventing inventors who actually make those inventions from subsequently patenting them. This is because the fictional disclosures effectively destroy the novelty of the inventions or render them obvious. Despite such disclosures, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not habitually or effectively search through fiction for pertinent prior art in its examinations. This paper explores the legal, economic, and pragmatic considerations if searching fiction is to become part of the patent examination process. Until recently, it was impracticable to search fiction in a manner that …

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Taiwan Patent No. Tw270143b, Adam R. Stephenson Dec 2006

Taiwan Patent No. Tw270143b, Adam R. Stephenson

Adam Stephenson

No abstract provided.

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