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Finding Invention, Oskar Liivak
Finding Invention, Oskar Liivak
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
One of the biggest problems plaguing modern patent law is its inability to provide predictable and clear exclusive rights. We would improve clarity by simply following the patent statute and extending exclusion only to "the patented invention." That suggestion, as reasonable as it may sound, is actually quite radical to the dominant patent law orthodoxy. It is not even clear under the dominant patent law orthodoxy what it would mean to limit patent scope to the invention, but it is generally presumed that it must lead to unacceptably narrow patents. Thus, even if it provides clarity, the invention is thought …
Rescuing The Invention From The Cult Of The Claim, Oskar Liivak
Rescuing The Invention From The Cult Of The Claim, Oskar Liivak
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Patent law is certainly a specialized field but I didn’t think it would be a cult. The term ‘invention’ appears in many critical statutory locations. Yet we have been taught, perhaps brainwashed, to give the term zero substantive import. Substantive use of the invention has been purged from patent doctrine. Instead every substantive question in patent law is answered by reference to the claims, the legal descriptions of the ‘metes and bounds’ of a patent’s exclusionary reach. Despite its promise of precision and uniformity, our modern invention-less system is anything but precise and uniform. This article argues that the trouble …