Law Commons^™

The Intellectual Property Of Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The response to COVID-19 is indissolubly tied to intellectual property. In an increasingly globalized world in which infectious disease pathogens travel faster and wider than before, the development of vaccines, treatments and other forms of medical technology has become an integral part of public health preparedness and response frameworks. The development of these technologies, and to a certain extent the allocation and distribution of resulting outputs, is informed by intellectual property regimes. These regimes influence the commitment of R&D resources, shape scientific collaborations and, in some cases, may condition the widespread availability of emerging technologies. As seen throughout this chapter, …

Patent Pool Outsiders, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Individuals who decline to join cooperative groups — outsiders — raise concerns in many areas of law and policy. From trade policy to climate agreements to class action procedures, the fundamental concern is the same: a single member of the group who drops out could weaken the remaining union. This Article analyzes the outsider problem as it affects patents.

The outsider question has important bearing on patent and antitrust policy. By centralizing and simplifying complex patent licensing deals, patent pools conserve tremendous transaction costs. This allows for the widespread production and competitive sale of many useful technologies, particularly in the …

Measuring The Costs And Benefits Of Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli, Robert P. Merges

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article addresses a policy question that has challenged scholars and lawmakers since the 1850s: Do the transaction cost benefits of patent pools outweigh their potential for consumer harm? This question has special importance today. Patent pools are on the increase, due to large numbers of patents in critical industries such as software and mobile phones. In this Article, we present the first empirically-based estimate of the transaction costs savings engendered by patent pools. Drawing on interviews with administrators of prominent pools, we document the costs of assembling and administering a functioning pool. We then estimate the transaction costs that …

Governing Medical Knowledge Commons - Introduction And Chapter 1, Katherine J. Strandburg, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

Governing Medical Knowledge Commons makes three claims: first, evidence matters to innovation policymaking; second, evidence shows that self-governing knowledge commons support effective innovation without prioritizing traditional intellectual property rights; and third, knowledge commons can succeed in the critical fields of medicine and health. The editors' knowledge commons framework adapts Elinor Ostrom's groundbreaking research on natural resource commons to the distinctive attributes of knowledge and information, providing a systematic means for accumulating evidence about how knowledge commons succeed. The editors' previous volume, Governing Knowledge Commons, demonstrated the framework's power through case studies in a diverse range of areas. Governing Medical Knowledge …

Power And Governance In Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent influx of patent pools, research consortia, and similar cooperative groups led by companies at the vanguard of American innovation has raised a pressing question: How does collective action influence the incentive to innovate? This question hinges on how patent pools are internally governed — a topic that has not been deeply examined by legal scholars. Through an original study of fifty-two private agreements, this Article pulls back the veil on patent licensing collectives to examine whether such organizations are designed to encourage long-term innovation.

This study draws on collective patent license agreements spanning the years 1856 to 2013 …

Commons At The Intersection Of Peer Production, Citizen Science, And Big Data: Galaxy Zoo, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The knowledge commons research framework is applied to a case of commons governance grounded in research in modern astronomy. The case, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example of at least three different contemporary phenomena. In the first place Galaxy Zoo is a global citizen science project, in which volunteer non-scientists have been recruited to participate in large-scale data analysis via the Internet. In the second place Galaxy Zoo is a highly successful example of peer production, sometimes known colloquially as crowdsourcing, by which data are gathered, supplied, and/or analyzed by very large numbers of anonymous and pseudonymous contributors to an …

The Innovation Commons, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This book of CASES AND MATERIALS ON INNOVATION AND COMPETITION POLICY is intended for educational use. The book is free for all to use subject to an open source license agreement. It differs from IP/antitrust casebooks in that it considers numerous sources of competition policy in addition to antitrust, including those that emanate from the intellectual property laws themselves, and also related issues such as the relationship between market structure and innovation, the competitive consequences of regulatory rules governing technology competition such as net neutrality and interconnection, misuse, the first sale doctrine, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Chapters …

Reclaiming Our Technological Posterity At The Intersection Of Intellectual Property And Taxation: Uncovering How Patent Pools Are Key To Recovering The Benefits Of Charitable Ip Contributions, Kevin Christopher

Intellectual Property Brief

No abstract provided.

Patent Chokepoints In The Influenza-Related Medicines Industry: Can Patent Pools Provide Balanced Access?, Dana Beldiman

Dana Beldiman

This paper illustrates the fact that when biological materials are used for development of pharmaceuticals, the patent system may function sub-optimally and may give rise to patent “thickets” and “anti-commons” which prevent commercialization of adequate amounts of product. These circumstances include inventions based on the same biological resource, patenting of largely similar functionalities, gene patents and patents that are narrow and fragmented. As a result, in order to obtain freedom to operate, drug developers must license-in multiple patents, often from competitors. This situation gives rise to uncertainty and is prone to hold-outs. The number of players actually developing drugs is …

Constructing Access Through Exclusion. The Effect Of Individual And Collective Patent Ownership And Licensing On Openness In Human Genomic Science, Geertrui R.L. Van Overwalle

Geertrui R.L. Van Overwalle

Human genomic science and intellectual property are often considered to be at odds. The present paper is an attempt to analyse the current problems in gene patenting through the lens of individual, multiple and collaborative ownership. The objective of the present chapter is to systematize the relation between modes of ownership, modes of licensing and their effect on access.

Individual and multiple ownership have different effects. Individual ownership may result in blocking patent positions and multiple ownership may lead to hindering patent thickets. Both phenomena frustrate follow-on innovation. The effect of individual and multiple ownership, blocking patents and patent thickets …

Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …

Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.

Northwestern Journal Of Technology And Intellectual Property Second Annual Symposium: Keynote Speech, James E. Malackowski

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Management Strategies To Accelerate The Development And Access Of Vaccines And Diagnostics: Case Studies On Pandemic Influenza, Malaria And Sars, Anatole Krattiger, Stanley P. Kowalski, Robert Eiss, Anthony Taubman

Law Faculty Scholarship

Achieving global access to vaccines, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals remains a challenge. Throughout the developing world, intellectual property (IP) constraints complicate access to critically essential medical technologies and products. Vaccines for malaria and pandemic strains of influenza, as well as diagnostic and vaccine technologies for SARS, are not only relevant to global public health but are particularly critical to the needs of developing countries. A global access solution is urgently needed. This article offers a timely case‐by‐case analysis of preliminary patent landscape surveys and formulates options via patent pools and other forms of creative IP management to accelerate development and access. …

Compulsory Licensing By Judicial Action: A Remedy For Misuse Of Patents, Neal Seegert

Michigan Law Review

Having viewed the fundamental problems, it is pertinent to outline some of the alleged abuses of the American patent system as it operates in our modern business and industrial economy and to canvass some of the proposed remedies. First are abuses that might be termed attempts to extend the duration of the patent monopoly. These stem mainly from the procedural aspects of the patent laws. Foremost among them is the problem of long pendency of applications, particularly the dilatory tactics that are possible under the law, which postpone issuance of the patent, thus extending the time duration of the patent …