Law Commons^™

Ai Patents: A Data Driven Approach, Brian S. Haney

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

While artificial intelligence (AI) research brings challenges, the resulting systems are no accident. In fact, academics, researchers, and industry professionals have been developing AI systems since the early 1900s. AI is a field uniquely positioned at the intersection of several scientific disciplines including computer science, applied mathematics, and neuroscience. The AI design process is meticulous, deliberate, and time-consuming – involving intensive mathematical theory, data processing, and computer programming. All the while, AI’s economic value is accelerating. As such, protecting the intellectual property (IP) springing from this work is a keystone for technology firms acting in competitive markets.

Choosing The Consequences Of Tam And Brunetti, Alfred C. Yen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In Matal v. Tam and Iancu v. Brunetti, the Supreme Court did something it has never done before – namely apply strict First Amendment scrutiny to trademark law. This is a big deal. Many have argued, to relatively little effect, that intellectual property laws, like trademarks, raise serious free speech problems. It is therefore significant news for the Court to declare portions of the Lanham Act unconstitutional not once, but twice.

Ranking Parallel Petitions Before The Ptab: A Survey, Monica Grewal, Heather Petruzzi, Wenli Gu Phd

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

To understand the trends in recent ranking practice, this article an-alyzes a subset of ranked parallel petitions that received an institution decision before or on February 20, 2020. Using a search filter in Docket Navigator to locate multiple petitions challenging the same pa-tent, the authors identified 39 occurrences of ranked parallel petitions that challenge the same claims of the same patents, as well as 2 occur-rences of ranked parallel petitions that challenge different claims of the same patent.

Unfettered Discretion: A Closer Look At The Board's Discretion To Deny Institution, Joel D. Sayres, Reid E. Dodge

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

To ensure that the doorway to IPRs was not limitless, Congress de-lineated a specific threshold before a trial could be instituted. That threshold is set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 314(a), which provides that IPR may not be instituted unless the petition “shows that there is a reasonable likelihood that the petitioner would prevail with respect to at least 1 of the claims challenged in the petition.” However, the Board has increas-ingly identified circumstances in which it will not institute IPR, even where a petitioner satisfies this statutory threshold. Indeed, the Board has seemingly adopted the view that it has …

Expert Discovery Protections: Comparing District Courts With The Ptab, Blaine M. Hackman, Vi T. Tran, Katherine A. Helm

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Expert witness testimony can be critical in patent litigation in all forums. In Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) proceedings, particularly inter partes review (“IPR”) and post-grant review (“PGR”), expert testimony through declarations and depositions plays a central role in both challenging and defending patents. In district courts, live expert testimony is key to proving infringement and invalidity. Accordingly, the legal protections governing the disclosure of expert testimony in discovery in both forums are carefully proscribed, but with notable distinctions.

Post-Ait Review Of Real Party In Interest Decisions, Stephanie M. Brooker, Robert Breetz, Matthew Johnson, Thomas Ritchie

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Throughout the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“PTAB”) history, patent owners have tried to leverage a petitioner’s alleged failure to name all real parties-in-interest (“RPIs”) as a way to achieve denial of an inter partes review (“IPR”) petition or trial termination. The effectiveness of those efforts has ebbed and flowed. Initially, some PTAB panels viewed naming of RPIs as a jurisdictional requirement, concluding that RPI-naming errors were not fixable after the 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) one-year bar. Petitioners could lose their petition filing date based on RPI missteps, resulting in then untimely petitions. Later decisions backed away from that hardline …

Ptab Table Of Contents

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Renegade Riders And The Marks They Love: Can The Government Tear That Patch Right Off Your Leather Jacket?, Angela M. Nieves

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

A collective membership mark is a type of non-commercial trademark used to identify and associate with something or someone. In February 2019, a California district court ruled that the government could not forcibly seize from the Mongols Motorcycle Club their prized collective membership marks, seemingly halting a ten-year legal tug of war. The court held that forfeiture of these marks was not only unconstitutional, it was illogical.

This Comment explains how and why expressive marks like the Mongols’ should not be automatically deemed off limits to the government. It proposes a trademark-specific doctrine to help courts draw a constitutional line …

The Eleventh Auer: The Effect Of Kisor V. Wilkie On Rulemaking And Adjudication At The United States Patent And Trademark Office, Andrew Schneider, Jonathan Stroud

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Courts have long deferred to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous rule or statute, in light of the agency’s relevant technical expertise. But some judges prefer that Article III courts review everything; and deferring often involves relying on an agency’s interpretation of a genuinely ambiguous statute—the oft-discussed Chevron deference doctrine. This Article analyzes the more nuanced Auer deference, where a court defers to an agency’s later interpretation of its own ambiguous rule or regulation. Recently, the Supreme Court took and decided Kisor v. Wilkie, which dramatically modified the Auer doctrine. While Kisor appealed a claim for veteran’s benefits that implicated …

Ptab Editor Page

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Empirical Inheritance Law, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

Empirical legal scholars tell it like it is. The nature of the “it” that we might want to know about varies significantly by legal field, however, and it also differs based on one’s scholarly position within that field. This Comment explores the major ways that empirical legal scholarship can be valuable to those of us working on normative or theoretical legal scholarship in inheritance law.

Distinguising Between Core And Peripheral Presential Powers, Harold J. Krent

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Trump Administration Versus The Administrative State: A Response To Professor Buzbee's Deregulatory Splintering, Rebecca Bratspies

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Progressive Regulatory Reform -- A Review And Critique Of Two Proposals, William Funk

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Response To William W. Buzbee, Deregulatory Splintering: What Might The Other Side Say?, Todd D. Rakoff

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Regulatory Accoutability Act Loses Steam But The Trump Executive Order On Alj Selection Upturned 71 Years Of Practice, Jeffery S. Lubbers

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mischief With Government Information Policy, Renée M. Landers

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Administrative Truth: Comments On Cortez's Information Mischief, David Thaw

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comments On Executive Ruilemaking And Democratic Legitimacy: "Reform" In The United States And The United Kingdom's Brexit Bt Susan Rose-Ackerman, Nicholas Almendares

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eroding "Checks" On Presidential Authorty -- Norms, The Civil Service, And The Courts, Peter L. Strauss

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Servant Resistance At The Epa -- A Response To Jennifer Nou, Joel A. Mintz

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Servant Alarm, Bijal Shah

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Civil servants have long resisted presidential immigration policies. However, bureaucratic by superiors, retaliation against resistance is the norm under the current dministration, despite the fact that this resistance has resulted from principled “dissonance” between civil servants’ understanding of their core responsibilities and the priorities emphasized by new political directives. Rather than condemnation, however, frequent incidents of resistance from divergent factions of the immigration bureaucracy, particularly if met with a harsh response from the President, should be characterized as a “fire alarm” imploring a congressional response.

Vo. 37, No. 2, Bryan Diemer

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Marijuana’s Fifty-Year Journey from an Illegal Narcotic to a Lawful Recreational Drug and Whether Workplace Drug Polices Will Now Go Up in Smoke, by Bryan Diemer

Recent Developments

Vol. 37, No. 1, Stephanie Brinson

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

Conflict Resolution for Chicago Police and Community: Healing a Constitutional Crisis at the "Thirteenth Floor" through Native American Reparative Justice

By Stephanie Brinson

Recent Developments

The Characterization Of Pre-Insolvency Proceedings In Private International Law, Adrian Walters, Irit Mevorach

All Faculty Scholarship

The decade since the fnancial crisis has witnessed a proliferation of various ‘light touch’ fnancial restructuring techniques in the form of so-called pre-insolvency proceedings. These proceedings inhabit a space on the spectrum of insolvency and restructuring law, somewhere between a pure contractual workout, the domain of contract law, and a formal insolvency or rehabilitation proceeding, the domain of insolvency law. While, to date, international insolvency instruments have tended to defne insolvency proceedings quite expansively, discussion of the cross-border implications of pre-insolvency proceedings has barely begun. The question is whether pre-insolvency proceedings should qualify as proceedings related to insolvency for the …

Age, Equality, And Vulnerability, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article uses age as an entry point for examining how temporal and methodological issues in egalitarianism make substantive equality an unattractive goal for vulnerability theory. Instead, vulnerabilitytheory should adopt a continuous doctrine of sufficiency, which is a better fit with vulnerability theory’s underlying aims and rhetoric. Instead of evaluating what individuals have in relation to others, sufficiency refocuses the inquiry on whether we have enough throughout the lifecourse. In the context of vulnerability theory, enough should be defined as the capability to be resilient as guaranteed by the responsive state.

Predatory Cities, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

Between 2011 and 2015, the Wayne County Treasurer completed the property tax foreclosure process for one in four properties in Detroit, Michigan. No other American city has experienced this elevated rate of property tax foreclosures since the Great Depression. Studies reveal that the City of Detroit systematically and illegally inflated the assessed value of most of its residential properties, which led to inflated property tax bills unaffordable to many homeowners. Extraordinary tax foreclosure rates and extensive dispossession resulted. Consequently, Detroit has become a “predatory city”—a new and important sociolegal concept that this Article develops. Predatory cities are urban areas where …

Tripping Over The Eu Trade Secret Directive: "Reasonable Steps" To Get Back On Track, Bianca Fox

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Trade secrets are a crucial tool for global firms today, including those that do business within the European Union (“EU”). The 2016 European Union Trade Secret Directive (“Directive”) attempted to establish uniform trade secret protection across all twenty-eight EU Member States but created problems in its wake. In particular, the Directive put no restrictions on whether Member States could specify certain “reasonable steps” that businesses must take in order to be afforded trade secret protection. This Article argues that Member States should be required to follow the trade secret definition laid out in Article 2 of the Directive and not …

German Law On Patent Injunctions: Legal Framework And Recent Developments, Peter Picht Phd

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Into The Woods: A Biologic Patent Thicket Analysis, Jeffrey Wu, Claire Wan-Chiung Cheng

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Some drug companies, brand biologic companies, in particular, have been accused of covering only a single drug with more than eighty patents. These drug patents accumulate to what critics claim as one of the major culprits of high drug prices— “patent thickets.” However, current literature mostly focuses on the substantial patent counts and less on the characteristics and the causes of these patent thickets; but to effectively understand and tackle this issue, more thorough discussions are necessary. This article aims to provide further insight into this issue by analyzing and comparing the U.S. patents that cover top-selling biologics and small-molecule …