Law Commons^™

The Anti-Monopoly Origins Of The Patent And Copyright Clause, Tyler T. Ochoa, Mark Rose

Faculty Publications

The British experience with patents and copyrights prior to 1787 is instructive as to the context within which the Framers drafted the Patent and Copyright Clause. The 1624 Statute of Monopolies, intended to curb royal abuse of monopoly privileges, restricted patents for new inventions to a specified term of years. The Stationers' Company, a Crown-chartered guild of London booksellers, continued to hold a monopoly on publishing, and to enforce censorship laws, until 1695. During this time, individual titles were treated as perpetual properties held by booksellers. In 1710, however, the Statute of Anne broke up these monopolies by imposing strict …

Converting Intellectual Assets Into Property, Thomas G. Field Jr

Law Faculty Scholarship

The mouse and graphic interface were first commercialized on Macintosh computers. Yet, Steve Jobs is said to have derived both from the Alto computer developed by Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. While Jobs became a billionaire, "Xerox completely failed to get into the personal computer business, missing one of the biggest business opportunities in history."

Preferring to be more akin to Apple than to Xerox, firms are increasingly mindful that their most valuable assets are apt to be ideas and information instead of land, buildings and inventory. Not capable of being fenced in or locked up, intangible assets can be …

Harmony And Diversity In Global Patent Law, John F. Duffy

Faculty Publications

The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of a broad movement to harmonize patent laws across nation-states. The most recent, and most significant, manifestation of this movement is the 1994 TRIPS Agreement, which requires signatory nations to adopt uniform rules on many major issues of patent law. The TRIPS Agreement has now been implemented by well over one hundred countries, including almost all major industrial nations, and it heralds a new level of international uniformity in patent law.

This Article, while acknowledging the value of some harmonization of national law , explores the possible costs of the …

Golden Rice: A Case Study In Intellectual Property Management And International Capacity Building, Stanley P. Kowalski, R. David Kryder

Law Faculty Scholarship

In order for agricultural biotechnology (agri-biotech) to play a larger role in the development of sustainable agricultural systems, intellectual property (IP) rights management must be addressed. These issues are not limited to developing countries. With increased globalization, the management of agri-biotech IP rights affects both developing and industrialized countries. In industrialized countries, for example, IP rights risk management entails protection of inventions via strong patent portfolios. For developing countries, IP rights risk management includes the acquisition of rights requisite for the use of inventions essential to the basic welfare of the population. Strategies are needed to bridge these disparate IP …

Hold-Up And Patent Licensing Of Cumulative Innovations With Private Information, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

When innovation is cumulative, early patentees hold claims against later innovators. Then potential hold-up may cause prospective second stage innovators to forego investing in R&D. It is sometimes argued that ex ante licensing (before R&D) avoids hold-up. This paper explores ex ante licensing when information about development cost is private. In this case, contracts may not be written ex ante. Moreover, the socially optimal division of profit occurs with weak patents and ex post licensing. Empirical evidence on licensing conforms to a model with private information. In some innovative industries, little ex ante licensing occurs, suggesting hold-up remains a problem.

Adequacy Of The 1995 Antitrust Guidelines For The Licensing Of Intellectual Property In Complex High Tech Markets, Clovia Hamilton

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

In 1995, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission adopted new guidelines for those wishing to license intellectual property rights without violating antitrust laws. Designed to provide clarity, these guidelines instead breed confusion because they misunderstand the nature of intellectual property markets and provide insufficient guidance in the most difficult areas. Section I of this article will discuss the basic provisions of the guidelines, especially their treatment of "innovation markets." It argues that government enforcers should focus primarily on activity that creates entry barriers. Understanding the use and misuse of licensing is the key to analyzing barriers in …

Reconsidering Estoppel: Patent Administration And The Failure Of Festo, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

Last Term, in Festo Corporation v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabashuki Co., the United States Supreme Court missed perhaps the most important opportunity for patent law reform in two decades. At the core of the failure to grasp the implications of "prosecution history estoppel" - a judicially-crafted principle limiting the enforceable scope of patents based on acts occurring during their application process - is the heretofore universal (but ultimately unsupportable) view of the doctrine as an arbitrary ex post limitation on patent scope. This Article demonstrates the serious flaws in this traditionalist approach, and develops a new theory of prosecution history …

Specialized Trial Courts: Concentrating Expertise On Fact, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

In the absence of a specialized patent trial court with expertise in fact-finding, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit often reviews de novo the many factual questions that pervade patent law. De novo review of fact by an appellate court is problematic. In the area of patent law, as in other areas of law, there are sound institutional justifications for the conventional division of labor that gives trial courts primary responsibility for questions of law. This Article identifies the problems created by de novo appellate review of fact and argues for the creation of a specialized trial court …

Application Of Patent Law Damages Analysis To Trade Secret Misappropriation Claims: Apportionment, Alternatives, And Other Common Limitations On Damages, Douglas G. Smith

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this article discusses the case law acknowledging the applicability of patent law precedents in the context of trade secret damage claims. Part II discusses the application of patent law precedents regarding lost profits as a measure of damages. Part III analyzes the applicability of patent law damages principles in the context of unjust enrichment as a measure of damages. Part IV then proceeds to examine how patent law principles are frequently applied in the context of royalty damages. Part V discusses the case law relating to disaggregation and apportionment of damages in the context of patent and …

Trade-Related Aspects Of Intellectual Property Rights And Biotechnology: European Aspects, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

There does not seem to be a widely held view among WTO members of the proper role and scope of TRIPS. One of the main reasons why TRIPS is controversial is because it allocates rights in innovation, some would say beyond the bounds of what a trade agreement should seek to do. The lines of the debate are often conceptualized in terms of 'developing' versus 'developed' country differences. One of the major areas of disagreement is how TRIPS deals with rights in biotechnology. Some developing countries are relatively rich in biodiversity and traditional knowledge but poor in capital and scientific …

Inventions, Industry Standards, And Intellectual Property, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

When an industry standard incorporates a patented invention, the demand for products that comply with the standard has two components. Some of the demand may be for the inherent technical advantages of the invention; the patentee is generally entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. But some of the demand is for the benefits of standardization, such as interoperability, and the patentee is not entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. From this point, the article draws two conclusions. First, the amounts to which a patentee is entitled, either in litigation or in licensing negotiations, should be calculated by determining …

Antitrust And The Costs Of Standard-Setting: A Commentary On Teece & (And) Sherry Symposium: The Interface Between Intellectual Property Law And Antitrust Law: Commentary, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

The creation of an industry standard is a process that has much in common with the creation of a patented invention. Indeed, if standards are not patentable, it is only because of certain doctrinal peculiarities of patent law. It is therefore important to preserve the incentives for organizations to incur the costs of standard-setting activity, so that society may gain the benefits of the resulting standards. The law can preserve those incentives by treating the contributions of industry standards as distinct from those of inventions that are incorporated in them. More specifically, antitrust law should ensure that the patentees of …

Dna Patenting And Access To Healthcare: Achieving The Balance Among Competing Interests, Melissa E. Horn

Cleveland State Law Review

Increasing evidence suggests that the biotechnology industry's interest in generating revenue and the public's desire to obtain the best healthcare may be at odds. The patenting of genetic information is at the core of this debate. Most, if not all, of the products of the biotech industry's research are patentable. Historically, patents have been justified on the grounds that they are needed to create an incentive for researchers and companies to invest time and money in projects that have uncertain outcomes. In the biotechnology arena, patents do not simply encourage innovation and allow innovators to recoup their costs. Patents can …