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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Law
Burying, Robert Brendan Taylor
Burying, Robert Brendan Taylor
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
When applying for a patent, applicants must provide the examiner with all known material prior art. Those who fail to do so can be charged with inequitable conduct. But applicants can still effectively hide material prior art references by submitting them along with large quantities of immaterial prior art to the examiner. This deceptive practice, known as "burying," is generally not considered inequitable conduct. This Essay summarizes the current legal landscape concerning burying, discusses the costs associated with the practice, and suggests ways to deter and punish those who do it.
Toward A System Of Invention Registration: The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, Jason Rantanen, Lee Petherbridge
Toward A System Of Invention Registration: The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, Jason Rantanen, Lee Petherbridge
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The recently enacted Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”) represents the most significant legislative event affecting patent law and practice in more than half a century. In addressing the AIA, scholars and policymakers have focused with an almost laser-like exclusivity on the AIA’s imposition of a first-to-file-or-first-to-publicly-disclose system, which replaces an over 200-year-old first-to-invent tradition. This myopia, we suggest, overlooks a part of the AIA that could hold a substantially greater potential to jeopardize American innovation, job creation, and economic competitiveness: the imposition of a mechanism for supplemental examination.
Is Novelty Obsolete - Chronicling The Irrelevance Of The Invention Date In U.S. Patent Law, Dennis D. Crouch
Is Novelty Obsolete - Chronicling The Irrelevance Of The Invention Date In U.S. Patent Law, Dennis D. Crouch
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This paper presents a normative study of patent prosecution by examining the role that invention-date-based novelty rights play in U.S. patent law. Three sources inform the primary results: the prosecution history files of 21,000+ patent applications filed in the past decade; a survey of 1,000+ patent practitioners regarding their use of the novelty provisions of the Patent Act; and a collection of 11,000,000+ prior art references cited in recently-issued patents. Additional compilations of prosecution file histories for patents identified as either (1) valuable or (2) worthless supplement these data sets and allow for an evaluation of the differential importance of …
Pharma's Nonobvious Problem, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Pharma's Nonobvious Problem, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
This Article considers the effect of the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. on the nonobviousness standard for patentability as applied to pharmaceutical patents. By calling for an expansive and flexible analysis and disapproving of the use of rigid formulas in evaluating an invention for obviousness, KSR may appear to make it easier for generic competitors to challenge the validity of drug patents. But an examination of the Federal Circuit's nonobviousness jurisprudence in the context of such challenges reveals that the Federal Circuit has been employing all along the sort of flexible …
Compulsory Patent Licensing: Is It A Viable Solution In The United States, Carol M. Nielsen, Michael R. Samardzija
Compulsory Patent Licensing: Is It A Viable Solution In The United States, Carol M. Nielsen, Michael R. Samardzija
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, so do the number of patents that cover every aspect of making, using, and selling these innovations. In 1996, to compound the rapid change of technology, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that business methods are also patentable. Hence in the current environment, scores of patents, assigned to many different parties, may cover a single electronic device or software--making it increasingly impossible to manufacture an electronic device without receiving a cease and desist letter or other notice from a patentee demanding a large royalty or threatening an injunction. Companies, particularly those in …
Bayh-Dole Reform And The Progress Of Biomedicine, Arti K. Rai, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Bayh-Dole Reform And The Progress Of Biomedicine, Arti K. Rai, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
Advances in fundamental biomedical research play an important and growing role in the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic products. Although the development of pharmaceutical end products has long been a proprietary enterprise, biomedical research comes from a very different tradition of open science. Within this tradition, long-standing norms call for relatively unfettered access to fundamental knowledge developed by prior researchers. The tradition of open science has eroded considerably over the past quarter century as proprietary claims have reached farther upstream from end products to cover fundamental discoveries that provide the knowledge base for future product development.
Business Method Patents And Their Limits: Justifications, History, And The Emergence Of A Claim Construction Jurisprudence, Nicholas A. Smith
Business Method Patents And Their Limits: Justifications, History, And The Emergence Of A Claim Construction Jurisprudence, Nicholas A. Smith
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Scholars, practitioners, and even popular media spilled much ink over business method patents in the late 1990s, eager to discuss the shift in jurisprudence that enabled patent holders to enforce business method patents for the first time. Since that initial period of excitement--during which businesses filed record numbers of applications for business method patents, and numerous articles tracing the doctrinal shift were published--commentators have written little on the topic. Various patent holders, however, have since litigated business method patent claims. During these first few years after judicial endorsement of business method patents, such litigation has focused on the scope of …
Re-Examining The Role Of Patents In Appropriating The Value Of Dna Sequences, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Re-Examining The Role Of Patents In Appropriating The Value Of Dna Sequences, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
As public and private sector initiatives race to complete the sequence of the human genome, patent issues have played a prominent role in speculations about the significance of this achievement. How much of the genome will be subject to the control of patent holders, and what will this mean for future research and the development of products for the improvement of human health? Is a patent system developed to establish rights in mechanical inventions of an earlier era up to the task of resolving competing claims to the genome on behalf of the many sequential innovators who elucidate its sequence …
Software Patents--Just Make A Good Thing Better, David R. Syrowik
Software Patents--Just Make A Good Thing Better, David R. Syrowik
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Some have stated that software is somehow "different" from other technologies and must be treated differently. Others have gone so far as to advocate the abolition of patents for software-related technologies. I disagree with both propositions. I believe a heavy burden rests on those who advocate that a particular field of technology should be exempted from the patent system absent a statutory prohibition. Software-related technology should be treated under the U.S. patent laws as any other technology would be treated. Otherwise, investment in the software industry will be negatively impacted. The current patent system is vital to the protection of …
Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
The Human Genome Project provides fertile ground for studying the role of intellectual property at the wavering boundary between public and private research science. It involves a major commitment of both public and private research funds in an area that is of significant interest both to research scientists working in university and government laboratories and to commercial firms. It thus provides a wealth of new scientific discoveries that are simultaneously potential candidates for commercial development and inputs into further research. Its obvious implications for human health raise the stakes of getting the balance between private property and public access right, …
Opinion Letter As To The Patentability Of Certain Inventions Associated With The Identification Of Partial Cdna Sequences, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Robert P. Merges
Opinion Letter As To The Patentability Of Certain Inventions Associated With The Identification Of Partial Cdna Sequences, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Robert P. Merges
Articles
You have asked for our legal opinion on the patentability of inventions claimed in U.S. patent applications 07/716,831, filed June 21, 1991 (the '831 application, or .'831"), 07/837,195, filed September 25, 1992 ("'195"), and 07/952,911, filed February 12, 1993 (."911"), all filed in the name of Craig Venter and others and assigned to the National Institutes of Health "(NIH)." We understand that NIH has abandoned these patent applications and has no present intention of filing similar applications in the future, but that NIH remains interested in the patenting of human DNA sequences from a broader public policy perspective. We have …
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Other Publications
Federal policy since 1980 has reflected an increasingly confident presumption that patenting discoveries made in the course of government-sponsored research is the most effective way to promote technology transfer and commercial development of those discoveries in the private sector. Policymakers in the past may have thought that the best way to achieve widespread use of government-sponsored research was to make the results freely available to the public; the new pro-patent policy stresses the need for exclusive rights as an incentive for industry to invest in bringing new products to market.
A Technology Policy Perspective On The Nih Gene Patenting Controversy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
A Technology Policy Perspective On The Nih Gene Patenting Controversy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
This article will use the NIH patent controversy as a focal point for considering when the results of government-sponsored research should be patented and when they should be dedicated to the public domain. First, this article will review the recent history of federal government policy on patenting the results of government-sponsored research. Next, this article will highlight some of the complexities involved in achieving technology transfer from the public sector to the private sector that current policy may oversimplify. With this background, this article will return to a more detailed analysis of the NIH cDNA patenting controversy and consider the …
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
Federal policy since 1980 has reflected an increasingly confident presumption that patenting discoveries made in the course of government-sponsored research is the most effective way to promote technology transfer and commercial development of those discoveries in the private sector. Whereas policymakers in the past may have thought that the best way to achieve widespread use of government-sponsored research was to make the results freely available to the public, the new propatent policy stresses the need for exclusive rights as an incentive for industry to undertake the further investment to bring new products to market. Although this propatent policy may make …
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca Sue Eisenberg
Limiting The Role Of Patents In Technology Transfer, Rebecca Sue Eisenberg
Articles
Federal policy since 1980 has reflected an increasingly confident presumption that patenting discoveries made in the course of government-sponsored research is the most effective way to promote technology transfer and commercial development of those discoveries in the private sector. Whereas policymakers in the past may have thought that the best way to achieve widespread use of government-sponsored research was to make the results freely available to the public, the new propatent policy stresses the need for exclusive rights as an incentive for industry to undertake the further investment to bring new products to market. Although this propatent policy may make …
Patenting The Human Genome, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Patenting The Human Genome, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
The increasing promise of federal funding for mapping and sequencing the human genome has brought with it renewed attention in the research science community to issues of intellectual property protection for products of biotechnology research. Echoing concerns raised a decade ago in the debate over commercialization of academic biomedical research, scientists have called for the free availability of all information generated through the Human Genome Project and have argued against allowing private intellectual property rights in such knowledge. Meanwhile, private parties have quietly been obtaining patents on bits and pieces of the human genome from the Patent and Trademark Office …