Law Commons^™

Post Ksr V. Teleflex: Is Anything Invented Patentable Anymore?, Adam R. Stephenson

Adam Stephenson

The Supreme Court's 2007 KSR v. Teleflex decision greatly broaded the definition of "obviousness" under 35 U.S.C. 103. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's expansively interpreted the case to overturn a number of key Federal Circuit cases relied heavily upon by patent practitioners. In view of the USPTO's position, can any invention be patented?

Patent Eligible Subject Matter In The Biotechnological Arts, Benjamin A. Keim

Benjamin A Keim

This paper compares the patentability of biotechnology inventions under the laws of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Five specific categories of biotechnology are examined: genes and DNA, microorganisms, plants and animals, human embryonic stem cells, and medical methods. The WTO-TRIPS agreement establishes the underlying framework followed by these countries. All of these counties allow patenting of genes and DNA as well as microorganisms. Plant and animal patents are allowed in all the countries except Canada. Surgical and medical methods are only patentable in the U.S. and Australia. Human embryonic cells are patentable in all jurisdictions, except for …

Bad Science In Search Of “Bad” Patents, Ron D. Katznelson

Ron D. Katznelson

This paper draws attention to fundamental deficiencies in studies that have been relied upon as authoritative sources on patent grant rate comparisons among national patent offices. The two prominent studies analyzed here had employed erroneous methods to compare patent grant rates, resulting in false high indications of such rates at the U.S. patent office compared to foreign patent offices. The three identified categories of analysis errors found in these studies were (i) the misapplication of conditional probability; (ii) miscounting invention applications; and (iii) failure to account for patent obsolescence and application attrition due to the widely differing delays among national …

Differing Shades Of Meaning, Robin C. Feldman

Robin C Feldman

The relationship between patent law and antitrust law has challenged legal minds since the emergence of antitrust law in the late 19th century. In reductionist form, the two concepts pose a natural contradiction: One encourages monopoly while the other restricts it. To avoid uncomfortable dissonance, the trend across time has been to try to harmonize patent and antitrust law. In particular, harmonization efforts in recent decades have led Congress and the courts to engage in a series of attempts, some aborted and some half-formed, to graft antitrust doctrines onto patent law. These efforts have failed to resolve the conflicts.

This …

Teaching Intellectual Property As A Skills Course , Malla Pollack

Malla Pollack

Students can gain experience in practical skills in substantive courses if professors spend the time to create appropriate projects. This article demonstrates by providing reproducible projects involving non-competition agreements, trademarks/trade dress, copyright, and patent. The article also explains the how projects can be expanded and how they can be transposed between counseling and litigation settings.

This paper is part of a symposium entitled “Reflections on Legal Education: How We Teach, How They Learn".

The Impact Of Regional Trade Areas On International Intellectual Property Rights, Brian Cimbolic

Brian Cimbolic

This article seeks to explore the impact of Customs Unions and Free Trade Areas (Regional Trade Areas, or “RTAs”) on both the developing world’s intellectual property concerns and on the international trade principle of most favored nation status. By examining various RTAs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”) and the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (the “FTAA”), along with several smaller RTAs, this paper seeks to show that RTAs are undermining the principles of the International Trade Agreements they are a supposed to be a part of by refusing to apply MFN principles and by …

Patent Injunctions And The Problem Of Uniformity Cost, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

In eBay v. MercExchange, the Supreme Court correctly rejected a one-size-fits-all approach to patent injunctions. However, the Court's opinion does not fully recognize that the problem of uniformity in patent law is more general and that this problem cannot be solved through case-by-case analysis. This Essay provides a field guide for implementing eBay using functional analysis and insights from a uniformity-cost framework developed more fully in prior work. While there can be no general rule governing equitable relief in patent cases, the traditional four factor analysis for injunctive relief should lead the cases to cluster around certain patterns that often …

Re-Evaluating Declaratory Judgment Jurisdiction In Intellectual Property Disputes, Lorelei Ritchie De Larena

Lorelei Ritchie de Larena

The Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934 was quickly tagged by the U.S. Supreme Court as a simple procedural measure. Whether simple or procedural, the addition of the declaratory judgment option has dramatically increased the rights of would-be defendants. This is of special interest in patent law, where without the ability to initiate legal action, an alleged infringer would typically have no recourse but to either drop a lucrative business and lose a massive investment, or to languish in legal limbo while potentially accruing liability for treble damages. The option of a mirror-image lawsuit removes the patentee’s ability to unilaterally decide …

Total Upgrade: Intellectual Property Law Reform In Russia, Sergey Budylin, Yulia Osipova

Sergey Budylin

Russia has undertaken a large-scale intellectual prop-erty (IP) law reform. The reform abolishes most of the ex-isting IP legislation and instead puts all IP issues into the new Fourth Part of the Civil Code. The new legislation was signed into force at the end of 2006, but it was made effective starting from January 1, 2008. While the new leg-islation largely restates, consolidates, and refines the exist-ing legislation, it also introduces some concepts not known to Russian law before (such as “unified technology”). Im-portantly, the new Russian IP legislation addresses issues currently being a matter of international concern (such as …

The Failure Of Public Notice In Patent Prosecution, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Patents often contain technical information intertwined with legal meaning, and inventions are often difficult to describe in words. Despite complex interpretive rules, patent law has failed in one of its essential missions - giving those who need to read patents the ability to understand the scope of a patent's claims in a consistent and predictable manner. As a result, those who rely on patents - patentees, potential and actual licensees, potential and actual defendants, future patent applicants, courts, and even the Patent and Trademark Office - may find it difficult or impossible to discern the metes and bounds of any …

Why Do We Have Trade Secrets?, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Trade secrets are arguably the most important and most litigated form of intellectual property, yet very little has been written that justifies their existence, perhaps because they differ so much from other forms of intellectual property. This article explores the history of trade secret law in the United States and examines why it is that every state has opted to protect secret information, even though such protection is antithetical to the policies of access associated with patent law and non-protection of 'facts' associated with copyright law. In this article, I examine four potential ways to justify trade secret law. First, …

Keeping Time Machines And Teleporters In The Public Domain: Fiction As Prior Art For Patent Examination, Daniel Harris Brean

Daniel Harris Brean

Taiwan Patent No. Tw270143b, Adam R. Stephenson

Adam Stephenson

No abstract provided.