Law Commons^™

Public Enforcement Of Patent Law, Megan M. La Belle

Scholarly Articles

Law enforcement in the modern regulatory state is largely a joint enterprise. In areas such as securities, antitrust, civil rights, and environmental law, enforcement responsibilities are allocated between public and private actors. Patent law, on the other hand, is enforced almost exclusively through private lawsuits. Considering patent law's constitutionally mandated public purpose--“to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”-- this privatization of patent enforcement is troubling.

In recent years, there has been some movement away from this purely private enforcement scheme for patent law. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, for example, have involved themselves in …

Fee Shifting For Ptab Proceedings, Megan M. La Belle

Scholarly Articles

Fee shifting in patent litigation has been a hot topic in recent years. In Octane Fitness v. ICON and Highmark v. Allcare, the Supreme Court made it easier to shift fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285, which allows courts to award reasonable attorney’s fees to prevailing parties in patent cases. Moreover, several bills have been introduced in Congress since 2013 that would expand courts’ power beyond the parameters of § 285. Various aspects of these proposals have been heavily debated, including whether fee shifting should be mandatory or discretionary, how to recover fees from the “real party in interest,” and …