Law Commons^™

Patent Injunctions On Appeal: An Empirical Study Of The Federal Circuit's Application Of Ebay, Christopher B. Seaman, Ryan T. Holte

Christopher B. Seaman

More than ten years after the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision in eBay v. MercExchange, the availability of injunctive relief in patent cases remains hotly contested. For example, in a recent decision in the long-running litigation between Apple and Samsung, members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit divided sharply on whether an injunction was warranted to prevent Samsung from continuing to infringe several smartphone features patented by Apple. To date, however, nearly all empirical scholarship regarding eBay has focused on trial court decisions, rather than the Federal Circuit. This Article represents the first comprehensive …

Permanent Injunctions In Patent Litigation After Ebay: An Empirical Study, Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman

American Innovation And The Limits Of Patent Law: A Response To William Hubbard, Competitive Patent Law, Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman

In his recent article Competitive Patent Law, Professor William Hubbard makes a valuable contribution regarding an underexplored aspect of patent law’s ability to encourage innovation — namely, “whether U.S. patent law can be tailored to provide U.S. innovators with enhanced incentives to invent” compared to foreign rivals, and thus by extension make American firms more competitive in the global marketplace. This brief response addresses three aspects of Professor Hubbard’s thoughtful and well-written article. First, it critiques the article’s contention that the United States is currently facing an “innovation gap.” Second, it critically evaluates the claim that patent law can play …

Standards Of Proof In Civil Litigation: An Experiment From Patent Law, David L. Schwartz, Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman

Standards of proof are widely assumed to matter in litigation. They operate to allocate the risk of error between litigants, as well as to indicate the relative importance attached to the ultimate decision. But despite their perceived importance, there have been relatively few empirical studies testing jurors’ comprehension and application of standards of proof, particularly in civil litigation. Patent law recently presented an opportunity to assess the potential impact of varying the standard of proof in civil cases. In Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership, the Supreme Court held that a patent’s presumption of validity can only be overcome by …

The Case Against Federalizing Trade Secrecy, Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman

Trade secrecy is unique among the major intellectual property (IP) doctrines because it is governed primarily by state law. Recently, however, a number of influential actors — including legislators, academics, and organizations representing IP attorneys and owners — have proposed creating a private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation under federal law. Proponents assert that federalizing trade secrecy would provide numerous benefits, including substantive uniformity, the availability of a federal forum for misappropriation litigation, and the creation of a unified national regime governing IP rights. This Article engages in the first systematic critique of the claim that federalizing …