Law Commons^™

The Uspto Patent Pro Bono Program, Jennifer M. Mcdowell, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has systematically been engaging the legal community with inventor assistance beyond the agency’s usual business of examining applications for patents and trademarks. The purpose of the USPTO’s effort has been to support innovators who are constrained by a lack of resources to pay for patent counsel necessary to protect the full scope of their inventions. This Article describes the brief history, flexible structure, and ongoing growth of that effort, embodied in the USPTO Patent Pro Bono Program. The Patent Pro Bono Program is a national network coordinated by the USPTO …

Do Reverse Payment Settlements Violate The Antitrust Laws, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

The term "reverse payment" has been used as shorthand to characterize a variety of diverse agreements between patent owners and alleged infringers that involve a transfer of consideration from the patent owner to the alleged infringer. Reverse payment settlements are particularly associated with drug patent challenges mounted by generic drug companies under the Hatch-Waxman Act. Many, including the Federal Trade Commission, would characterize these agreements as antitrust violations. However, courts have generally declined to find these agreements in violation of the antitrust laws based solely on the presence of a reverse payment.

This article begins in Section II with an …