Law Commons^™

The Case Against Federalizing Trade Secrecy, Christopher B. Seaman

Scholarly Articles

Trade secrecy is unique among the major intellectual property (IP) doctrines because it is governed primarily by state law. Recently, however, a number of influential actors — including legislators, academics, and organizations representing IP attorneys and owners — have proposed creating a private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation under federal law. Proponents assert that federalizing trade secrecy would provide numerous benefits, including substantive uniformity, the availability of a federal forum for misappropriation litigation, and the creation of a unified national regime governing IP rights.

This Article engages in the first systematic critique of the claim that federalizing …

Foresight Bias In Patent Law, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Much of patent reform has focused on efforts to make it harder to obtain and enforce low-quality patents. The most straightforward way to achieve this goal is to raise the substantive standards of patentability. What is often ignored in discussions about raising patentability standards is that high-quality inventions can slip through the cracks. What is more troubling is that sometimes this happens because of bias. This Article draws attention to foresight bias, which occurs when a decision-maker lets over-pessimism and an oversimplified view of the future influence the patentability determination. Foresight bias leads to a patent denial regardless of the …