Law Commons^™

Pay The Troll Toll: The Patent Troll Model Is Fundamentally At Odds With The Patent System's Goal Of Innovation And Competition, Grace Heinecke

Fordham Law Review

Patent litigation has multiplied sixfold since the 1980s, with the last few years seeing an unprecedented number of patent lawsuits. When an inventor receives a patent, the U.S. Constitution grants him a monopoly for a limited number of years to reward him for his investment of time and resources and to incentivize him to continue innovating, which ultimately benefits society. However, the emergence of a litigious character, deemed the “patent troll,” has led to the patent system’s hindrance of innovation, a result that is at odds with the primary goal of patent law. Patent trolls exploit weaknesses in the patent …

School Boy's Tricks: Reasonable Cybersecurity And The Panic Of Law Creation, David S. Levine

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Ex Parte Seizures And The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Eric Goldman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Congress is considering the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which would create a new federal trade secret civil cause of action. The Act includes a quirky and unprecedented ex parte procedure for trade secret owners to obtain a seizure order. The seizure provision applies in, at best, a narrow set of circumstances, and it oddly attempts to protect intangible trade secrets by seizing chattels. Despite procedural safeguards, the seizure provision also enables anti-competitive misuse.

More generally, the fact-based disputes that inevitably must be resolved in trade secret litigation make trade secrets an especially poor basis for ex parte actions. As a …

The Dtsa: The Litigator's Full-Employment Act, Sharon K. Sandeen

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Civil litigation is expensive, both for the party bringing suit and the party that must defend against such claims. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the usual requests for preliminary relief and protective orders, trade secret litigation is particularly expensive. These costs can have a crippling effect on small businesses and start-up companies that are accused of trade secret misappropriation, often resulting in litigation expenses that exceed the alleged harm to the plaintiff. Such litigation is particularly costly and unjust in cases where the plaintiff asserts rights that, due to common misunderstandings about the limited …

Do Abstract Ideas Have The Need, The Need For Speed?: An Examination Of Abstract Ideas After Alice, Maria R. Sinatra

Fordham Law Review

Imagine you invented a way to perform mathematical calculations all over the world simultaneously. Now, imagine that you cannot patent your invention because it was compared to, and found to contain, the same idea as an abacus. This scenario was the outcome of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International.

In coming to its decision in Alice, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a two-part test that it had previously utilized to analyze the patentability of laws of nature to determine whether the patent at issue met the subject matter patentability standards of § 101 of the Patent Act. Determining …

Set The Statutes Straight: Amending The Lanham Act To Dispel The Confusion Regarding Reverse Confusion, Inna Kaminer

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

The typical case of alleged trademark infringement, i.e., “forward confusion,” involves a larger and more established “senior user” and a smaller and less powerful “junior user.” The secondary junior user wrongfully uses the first senior user’s mark as its own, and thus benefits from the senior user’s more established goodwill. In ruling on a senior user’s trademark infringement claim, the court will use a set of “likelihood of confusion” factors to determine if consumers are confusing the junior user’s goods for that of the senior. Each circuit’s factors vary, but they are harmonious. The issue that this Note explores is …

Freedom Of Expression And Morality-Based Impediments To The Enforcement Of Intellectual Property Rights, Marc J. Randazza

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Human Genome: A Patenting Dilemma, Pamela Docherty

Akron Law Review

This Comment will address the conflict between the U.S. patent laws and biotechnology by focusing on the NIH patent application.

The first part of this Comment discusses the objectives and statutory requirements of the patent system, which the NIH application purportedly did not meet. Next, this Comment focuses on the debate between NIH and its detractors. It explains NIH's reasons for its actions and discusses the criticisms leveled at the agency. Finally, this Comment presents solutions to the problems that have been uncovered by this debate regarding the patentability of genes.

Hilmer Doctrine And Patent System Harmonization: What Does A Foreign Inventor Have At Stake?, Kevin L. Leffel

Akron Law Review

The following discussion begins with a historical analysis that outlines the boundaries and illustrates the basis of Hilmer doctrine. Examples of the effects of Hilmer doctrine are presented as part of that discussion. Next, effects of the application of Hilmer doctrine after an interference are discussed followed by an analysis of the Patent Harmonization Act of 1992.

Human Creativity For Economic Development: Patents Propel Technology, Robert M. Sherwood

Akron Law Review

Intellectual property both leads and lags the development of new technology. It lags in the sense that developments usually precede the law. Today science is accelerating so rapidly that the lawyers and policy analysts can barely grasp what the new questions are, much less supply answers. How are we to adapt the historic forms of protection to deal with new things like patents for genetically modified life forms, or for the Internet? Yet, this process of adaptation is not new. There was a time when maps were all the rage in Europe and judges puzzled over how much difference was …

Know Thyself As You Know Thy Enemy: Setting Goals And Keeping Focus When Mediating Ip Disputes, Michael H. King, Peter N. Witty

Akron Law Review

Therefore, while we briefly discuss the expected improvements to the mediation process following the enactment of the Uniform Mediation Act, we want to put aside the reality that mediation can work in some situations and instead focus on identifying and overcoming various impediments to a successful mediation. Specifically, we want to address two points: (1) the importance of defining realistic objectives for the process, and (2) the importance of staying focused on obtaining those objectives.

I'Ll Make Him An Offer He Can't Refuse: A Proposed Model For Alternative Dispute Resolution In Intellectual Property Disputes, Kevin M. Lemley

Akron Law Review

This article will discuss alternative dispute resolution in intellectual property disputes. A conceptual approach will be applied in an effort to better formulate the parties’ strategies towards litigation or alternative dispute resolution. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a maturing area of the law, and its application to intellectual property disputes is complicated.1 These complications make any analysis difficult to organize. This article will discuss the underlying components of ADR and intellectual property disputes in a step-by-step fashion. Part I of this article discusses intellectual property rights and presents two conceptual interests underlying these rights. Deciding whether to litigate or pursue …

Antitrust Issues In The Litigation And Settlement Of Infringement Claims, Deborah A. Coleman

Akron Law Review

Although the owner of intellectual property rights is privileged to enforce those rights through litigation and to settle such litigation on satisfactory terms, infringement actions or case settlements can create liability for antitrust violations or unfair competition. Most importantly, an agreement in restraint of trade is not sheltered from antitrust scrutiny because it is made in the context of settling threatened or actual infringement litigation. That a patent confers a limited legal monopoly in a product, method or process is only one fact that is taken into account in evaluating whether the terms under which infringement litigation is settled unfairly …

The Disclosure Requirements Of The 1952 Patent Act: Looking Back And A New Statute For The Next Fifty Years, Harold C. Wegner

Akron Law Review

The 1952 Patent Act was a major event in terms of cutting and pasting together the various patent laws from the previous eighty or so years into the first patent law codification of the twentieth century. The great bulk was a mere codification of principles, going back in some cases to the earliest patent laws of the eighteenth century, that was the work of P. J. Federico.2 Of the three major changes made to the patent law in 1952, each was primarily the work of the late Giles Sutherland Rich,3 with his revision of Section 112 to introduce “means” claiming-perhaps …

Comment: The Tiger Woods Case - Has The Sixth Circuit Abandoned Trademark Law? Etw Corp. V. Jireh Publishing, Inc., Joseph R. Dreitler

Akron Law Review

For more than fifty years, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vigilantly protected the intellectual property rights of trademark owners and persons seeking protection of their privacy and rights of publicity. Less than two years ago, that changed. In a turnaround remarkable for its suddenness and completeness, the court veered away from protecting intellectual property rights. Perhaps the reason for the departure lies in the stinging reversals of two of its decisions by the United States Supreme Court, or perhaps it lies in a string of admittedly questionable cases brought by overreaching plaintiffs. Regardless of the …

Alice In Wonderland Meets The U.S. Patent System, Jay Dratler Jr.

Akron Law Review

The attached article outlines in some detail why I think it matters in two particular fields—software and business methods—in which the PTO has issued, and the Federal Circuit has upheld, what I think are too many patents on non-inventions. The following remarks take a broader and longer-range view of patents generally.

The first reason why having a properly balanced patent system matters relates to the historical period in which we find ourselves. The world is now in the process of transferring the self-evident benefits of robust innovation, free markets, and free trade from Anglo-American and other advanced societies to the …

Intellectual Property Rights In Virtual Environments: Considering The Rights Of Owners, Programmers And Virtual Avatars, Woodrow Barfield

Akron Law Review

An emerging issue in online role-playing games is whether the licensor or participant owns the virtual property (such as a virtual avatar) created while the game is being played...Such rights have real world consequences for the objects created in the virtual world...Commercial software has been designed to allow people to create their own interactive, emoting 3D avatar using photographs of their individual faces, and their own unique voice as templates...Virtual environments can be designed for single inhabitants, such as a solo flight trainee, or for many, simultaneous participants... Further, people who spend significant amounts of time in virtual environments are …

A Brief Essay On The Importance Of Time In International Conventions Of Intellectual Property Rights, Vincenzo Vinciguerra

Akron Law Review

This essay will briefly address the issue of time in some fundamental international conventions on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Primarily, this article concentrates on four current international conventions and discusses the importance and international relevance of the time factor in each convention. The first part introduces two characteristic ideas of time inherited from philosophical thought. It also describes how “linearity,” one characteristic time can assume, might be a way to think of the legal system. This article does not delve into philosophical aspects of this issue; they are merely a cue to analyze the issue of time in the context …

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2015

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The staff of PIPSELF has worked diligently this year in selecting and preparing original and appealing articles concerning emerging issues in the fields of intellectual property, sports, and entertainment law for this issue. We welcome our readers to send comments and feedback: e-mail us at pipself@law.pace.edu, visit our Twitter @PIPSELF, or ‘like’ us on Facebook at “Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum.”

The Constitutionality Of Design Patents, Ralph D. Clifford, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Design patents have been part of American law since 1842. In that time, only just over 600,000 design patents have been issued, with more than half of these being granted in the last twenty years. This quantity is dramatically fewer than the number of utility patents issued which is rapidly approaching 9,000,000 issued patents. Possibly because of the low usage of design patents over time, no case law and little literature address the constitutional issues raised by them. This article intends to overcome that shortcoming. Two constitutional aspects of design patents will be examined.

First, congressional authority to adopt the …

When Is A Patent Exhausted? Licensing Patents On A Claim-By-Claim Basis, Lucas Dahlin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The patent exhaustion doctrine is meant to protect legitimate purchasers of patented items from post-sale restrictions imposed by patent owners. The courts, however, have recently expanded the doctrine of patent exhaustion by holding that the sale of a device which “partially” practices a patent exhausts that patent in its entirety. This holding essentially precludes patent owners from licensing their patents on a claim-by-claim basis. As inventions become more complex and require more parties working in concert to bring an idea to market, the inability to license patents on a claim-by-claim basis will lead to inventors being unable to fully monetize …

Notice And Remedies In Copyright Licensing, B. J. Ard

Missouri Law Review

Copyright owners claim the power to designate practically any term of a copyright license as a “condition” enforceable in copyright. In doing so, these licensors purport to translate breach of the most trivial or idiosyncratic term into the basis for a copyright infringement suit. This Article argues that these licenses are most problematic when licensors provide inadequate notice of unexpected terms. License conditions are typically buried in boilerplate that no reasonable consumer reads, and licensors have few incentives to make them more salient. These circumstances not only threaten unwitting users with copyright liability, but also impede copyright’s own goals by …

Exploring The Abstact: Patent Eligibility Post Alice Corp V. Cls Bank, John Clizer

Missouri Law Review

This Note first sets forth the facts and the ultimate holding of the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice. It then details the historical background surrounding the ineligibility of abstract ideas for patent protection that has arisen from the Supreme Court and lower federal courts’ past decisions. Next, it examines in more in detail the Court’s reasoning as applied in this particular case. Finally, this Note discusses several of the questions raised by the Court’s decision: what exactly constitutes an “abstract idea,” what is the full meaning of the Court's "inventive concept" requirement, and how are we to interpret this decision …

Identity Property: Protecting The New Ip In A Race-Relevant World, Philip Lee

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hacking Trademark Law For Collaborative Communities, Yana Welinder, Stephen Laporte

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Collaborative communities create popular work with widely recognized brands, such as Wikipedia, Linux, Android, and Firefox. Trademark law can provide protections to members of these communities and the users of their products so that they can rely on the brands to identify the original projects. This Article explores the conflict between collaborative communities and trademark law. While collaborative communities thrive on openness and decentralization, trademark law requires centralized quality control and various formalities. This Article introduces a descriptive taxonomy of “hacks” that collaborative communities have used to try to mitigate the tensions between their values and trademark law. These hacks …

British Invasion: Importing The United Kingdom's Orphan Works Solution To United States Copyright Law, Abigail Bunce

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should All Drugs Be Patentable?: A Comparative Perspective, Cynthia M. Ho

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Although there has been substantial discussion of the proper scope of patentable subject matter in recent years, drugs have been overlooked. This Article begins to address that gap with a comparative perspective. In particular, this Article considers what is permissible under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as well as how India and Canada have utilized TRIPS flexibilities in different ways to properly reward developers of valuable new drugs, while also considering the social harm of higher prices beyond an initial patent term on drugs.

This Article brings valuable insight into this area at a critical …

The Lisbon Agreement: Why The United States Should Stop Fighting The Geneva Act, Danielle Dudding

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In May 2015, members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a Diplomatic Conference that resulted in the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications. The Act modified the Lisbon Agreement (originally created in 1958), extending its previous protection of appellations of origin to geographical indications as well. The United States, which remains a non-party to the Lisbon Agreement, has been adamantly against the expansion of the Agreement to geographical indications. This Note explores the issues surrounding the Geneva Act, the state of the law and international agreements leading up to the Act, …

Developments In Synthetic Biology Are Altering The Ip Imperatives Of Biotechnology, Christopher M. Holman

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

While the accomplishments of the biotechnology industry have been substantial, recent technological advances promise to dramatically increase the power and utility of the discipline over the coming years. The term "synthetic biology" has been coined to describe the application of these powerful new tools to the engineering of synthetic genetic sequences and organisms. In essence, synthetic biology represents the next iteration in the ongoing evolution of biotechnology, and hopes run high that in time, the fruits of synthetic biology will dwarf the past successes of conventional biotechnology. There is, however, some concern that the current patent-centric approach to Intellectual Property …

Frank Miller’S Sin City College Football: A Game To Die For And Other Lessons About The Right Of Publicity And Video Games, Jordan M. Blanke

Washington and Lee Law Review

The challenge of finding a workable solution for applying the right of publicity is a formidable one because it implicates not only a delicate balance between First Amendment rights and the rights of publicity, but also the complications of varying state laws. The best of the tests developed by the courts so far—the transformative use test—was borrowed from copyright law and itself reflects a careful balance between First Amendment and copyright interests. Additionally, because of dramatic progress in technology, it is likely that in the near future this balancing will often involve not only the rights of publicity and the …