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Full-Text Articles in Law
Joinder Under The Aia: Shifting Non-Practicing Entity Patent Assertions Away From Small Businesses, Xun Liu
Joinder Under The Aia: Shifting Non-Practicing Entity Patent Assertions Away From Small Businesses, Xun Liu
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
When the America Invents Act ("AIA ") was signed in September 2011, many feared the law might benefit larger corporations at the expense of small businesses. This Note examines how one portion of the AIA, governing joinder in patent cases, might actually benefit small businesses by reducing patent assertions from non-practicing entities ("NPEs"). NPE assertions disproportionately affect small businesses, both because NPEs target small businesses more frequently and because patent assertions have a greater impact on individual companies. Prior to the AIA, joining multiple defendants in a single lawsuit offered important advantages for patent holders and allowed NPEs to achieve …
Patent Costs And Unlicensed Use Of Patented Inventions, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Patent Costs And Unlicensed Use Of Patented Inventions, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
Recent commentators have observed, and sometimes lamented, significant gaps between the formal reach of the patent system and the practical exclusionary effect of patent law. It is costly for technology developers to obtain and assert patents, for technology users to identify the patents they might be infringing and to clear rights, and for the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to find patent-defeating prior art. The costs of the patent system provide shelter for infringing behavior that might otherwise lead to either licensing or liability, perhaps mitigating excesses in the patent system while retaining strong rights that motivated owners may enforce. …
Noncompliance, Nonenforcement, Nonproblem? Rethinking The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Noncompliance, Nonenforcement, Nonproblem? Rethinking The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
A decade ago the biomedical research community was sounding alarm bells about the impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on the ability of scientists to do their work. Controversies and delays in negotiating terms of access to patented mice and genes, databases of scientific information, and tangible research materials all pointed toward the same conclusion: that IP claims were undermining traditional sharing norms to the detriment of science. Michael Heller and I highlighted one dimension of this concern: that too many IP rights in "upstream" research results could paradoxically restrict "downstream" research and product development by making it too costly …
Bargaining Over The Transfer Of Proprietary Research Tools: Is This Market Failing Or Emerging?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Bargaining Over The Transfer Of Proprietary Research Tools: Is This Market Failing Or Emerging?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Book Chapters
This analysis highlights the importance of transactions between prior and subsequent innovators to permit valuable research to go forward across the boundaries of prior patent claims. In a recent article focusing on biomedical research,4 Michael Heller and I argue that too many patent rights on 'upstream' discoveries can stifle 'downstream' research and product development by increasing transaction costs and magnifying the risk of bargaining failures. Just as too few property rights leave communally held resources prone to overuse in a 'tragedy of the commons', too many property rights can leave resources prone to underuse in what Heller calls a 'tragedy …