Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Patents As Property: Conceptualizing The Exclusive Right(S) In Patent Law, Adam Mossoff
Patents As Property: Conceptualizing The Exclusive Right(S) In Patent Law, Adam Mossoff
Adam Mossoff
The conventional wisdom is that the definition of patents as property has been long settled: unlike land and chattels, which secure the traditional "bundle" of rights, patents secure only a negative right to exclude. In exploring the history of American patent law, this Article reveals that this claim is profoundly mistaken. For much of its history, a patent was defined by Congress and courts in the same conceptual terms as property in land and chattels, as securing the exclusive rights of possession, use and disposition. Nineteenth-century courts explicitly used this substantive conception of patents to create many longstanding legal doctrines, …
Patents As Property: Conceptualizing The Exclusive Right(S) In Patent Law, Adam Mossoff
Patents As Property: Conceptualizing The Exclusive Right(S) In Patent Law, Adam Mossoff
Adam Mossoff
The conventional wisdom is that the definition of patents as property has been long settled-—patents secure only a right to exclude. In exploring the intellectual history of American patent law, this Article reveals that this claim is profoundly mistaken. For much of its history, Congress and courts defined a patent in the same conceptual terms as property in land and chattels, as securing the exclusive rights of possession, use and disposition. Nineteenth-century courts explicitly used this substantive conception of patents to create many longstanding doctrines in the American patent system, such as the conveyance default rules now known as patent …
Standardization And Pluralism In Property Law , Nestor M. Davidson
Standardization And Pluralism In Property Law , Nestor M. Davidson
Faculty Scholarship
At the heart of contemporary property theory stands an intriguing puzzle. Unlike the relatively unconstrained freedom that contract law provides for private ordering, property law recognizes only a limited and standard list of mandatory forms. This standardization-known as the numerus clausus from the civil law concept that the "number is closed" -poses a basic conundrum: what can explain a persistent feature of the law that seems, at first glance, so clearly to restrict the autonomy and efficiency gains conventionally associated with private property? This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I describes the numerus clausus principle and the problems that …
Property And Relative Status , Nestor M. Davidson
Property And Relative Status , Nestor M. Davidson
Faculty Scholarship
Property does many things-it incentivizes productive activity, facilitates exchange, forms an integral part of individual identity, and shapes communities. But property does something equally fundamental: it communicates. And perhaps the most ubiquitous and important messages that property communicates have to do with relative status, with the material world defining and reinforcing a variety of economic, social, and cultural hierarchies. This status-signaling function of property-with property serving as an important locus for symbolic meaning through which people compare themselves to others-complicates premises underlying central discourses in contemporary property theory. In particular, status signaling can skew property's incentive and allocative benefits, leading …