Law Commons^™

Virtual Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason J. Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Industrial design is migrating to the virtual world, and the design patent system is migrating with it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already granted several thousand design patents on virtual designs, patents that cover the designs of graphical user interfaces for smartphones, tablets, and other products, as well as the designs of icons or other artifacts of various virtual environments. Many more such design patent applications are pending; in fact, U.S. design patent applications for virtual designs represent one of the fastest growing forms of design subject matter at the USPTO.

Our project is the first comprehensive …

Panel Ii: The Global Contours Of Ip Protection For Trade Dress, Industrial Design, Applied Art, And Project Configuration, Mark D. Janis, Susan Scafidi, Orit Fischman Afori, Wendy J. Gordon, Jonathan Moskin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Claims To Information Qua Information And A Structural Theory Of Section 101, Kevin Emerson Collins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this article, I start from the premises that claims to inventive information qua information are not and should not be patentable, and I pursue two lines of inquiry. First, I argue that a structural theory of Section l0l of the Patent Act provides a policy-driven, conceptually coherent and statutorily justified interpretation that explains why claims to inventive information qua information should be excluded from the realm of patentable subject matter. In brief, patentable subject matter must be restricted in this manner to preserve the duality of claiming and disclosing upon which the entire patent regime is constructed.

Second, I …

Second Tier Patent Protection, Mark D. Janis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.