Law Commons^™

The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee

Peter Lee

Although tensions between universality and exceptionalism apply throughout law, they are particularly pronounced in patent law, a field that deals with highly technical subject matter. This Article explores these tensions by investigating an underappreciated descriptive theory of Supreme Court patent jurisprudence. Significantly extending previous scholarship, it argues that the Court’s recent decisions reflect a project of eliminating “patent exceptionalism” and assimilating patent doctrine to general legal principles (or, more precisely, to what the Court frames as general legal principles). Among other motivations, this trend responds to rather exceptional patent doctrine emanating from the Federal Circuit in areas as varied as …

Social Innovation, Peter Lee

Peter Lee

This Article provides the first legal examination of the immensely valuable but underappreciated phenomenon of social innovation. Innovations such as cognitive behavioral therapy, microfinance, and strategies to reduce hospital-based infections greatly enhance social welfare yet operate completely outside of the patent system, the primary legal mechanism for promoting innovation. This Article draws on empirical evidence to elucidate this significant kind of innovation and explore its divergence from the classic model of technological innovation championed by the patent system. In so doing, it illustrates how patent law exhibits a rather crabbed, particularistic conception of innovation. Among other characteristics, innovation in the …

Transcending The Tacit Dimension: Patents, Relationships, And The Industrial Organization Of Technology Transfer, Peter Lee

Peter Lee

As a key driver of innovation and economic growth, university-industry technology transfer has attracted significant attention. Formal technology transfer, which encompasses patenting and licensing university inventions, is often characterized as proceeding according to market principles. According to this dominant conception, patents help commodify academic inventions, which universities then advertise and transfer to private firms in licensing markets.

This Article challenges and refines this market-oriented view of technology transfer. Drawing from empirical studies, it shows that effective technology transfer often involves long-term personal relationships rather than discrete market exchanges. In particular, it explores the significant role of tacit, uncodified knowledge in …