Law Commons^™

Centering Black Women In Patent History, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Kara Swanson’s latest article is a remarkable example of legal historical scholarship that excavates stories from the past to illuminate the present. It is chock full of archival evidence and historical analysis that explains gaps and silences in the United States patent registry as evidence of marginalized inventors–particularly Black women–who should be named inventors but are not.

The article is arresting reading for anyone interested in antebellum history, intellectual property, and the intersection of racism and sexism in law. Mostly, I am grateful to Professor Swanson for doing the obviously very hard work of digging through archives, reading microfiche, …

Nonpatentability Of Business Methods: Legal And Economic Analysis, Peter Menell, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

In this brief filed in Bilski vs. Kappos, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, we argue that the "useful Arts" limitation of the the Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S.Constitution restricts the scope of Congress's patent power to technological advances. Beyond this constitutional limitation, Congress has not extended patent protection to business methods. The subject matter provision of the 1952 Patent Act merely codified existing subject matter categories and limitations, including the exclusion of business methods. The First Inventor Defense Act of 1999 did not alter this limitation on patentable subject matter. It did not amend the subject matter provision. …

Competition And Innovation: The Breakup Of Ig Farben, Felix Poege

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between competition and innovation is difficult to disentangle, as exogenous variation in market structure is rare. The 1952 breakup of Germany’s leading chemical company, IG Farben, represents such a disruption. After the Second World War, the Allies occupying Germany imposed the breakup because of IG Farben’s importance for the German war economy instead of standard antitrust concerns. In technology areas where the breakup reduced concentration, patenting increased strongly, driven by domestic firms unrelated to IG Farben. An analysis of patent texts shows that an increased propensity to patent does not drive the effect. Descriptively, IG Farben’s successors increased …

Sy-Stem-Ic Bias: An Exploration Of Gender And Race Representation On University Patents, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

People of color and women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (“STEM”) fields in the United States. Through both intentional and unintentional structural barriers, universities continue to lose valuable intellectual resources by perpetuating a lack of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity as people climb the academic ladder. Identifying racial and gender disparities between university campus populations and their patent representation quantifies the qualitatively observed systemic racism and sexism plaguing STEM. Although many have written about racial and gender underrepresentation in STEM, no author has ever endeavored to simultaneously quantify the racial and gender gap at universities in the …

Homography Of Inventorship: Dabus And Valuing Inventors, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

On July 28, 2021, the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience ("DAB US") became the first computer to be recognized as a patent inventor. Due to the advocacy of DAB US's inventor, Dr. Stephen Thaler, the world's definition of "inventor" has finally fractured - dividing patent regimes between recognition of machine inventorship and lack thereof This division has sparked many scholarly conversations about inventorship contribution, but none have discussed the implications of a homographic inventorship.

This Article addresses the implications of international homographic inventorship - where countries have different notions and rules concerning patent inventorship - and the …

Who Benefits?: How The Aia Hurt Deceptively Non-Joined Inventors, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Congress enacted the America Invents Act (“AIA”) to bolster economic development, sustain American innovation, and protect American jobs. This pro-business legislation, however, overlooked one actor critical to any successful innovation endeavor: the inventor. The AIA created access barriers, preventing inventors from efficiently and effectively seeking the entire remedy spectrum to which they are entitled. Paul Morinville and others have opined that the new first-to-file system put small inventors out of business, naming the AIA the single worst disaster in the history of the U.S. patent system. Beyond the filing and subject matter changes, the AIA created fundamental access to justice …