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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Doctrine Of Equivalents In Various Patent Regimes: Does Anybody Have It Right?, Martin J. Adelman
The Doctrine Of Equivalents In Various Patent Regimes: Does Anybody Have It Right?, Martin J. Adelman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The doctrine of equivalents is arguably one of the most important aspects of patent law. The protection a patent confers is meaningless if its scope is determined to be so narrow that trivial changes to a device bring it out of the bounds of the patent. One of the greatest challenges courts and legislatures therefore face in patent law is to create rules for determining patent scope that maintain the protection a patent is meant to confer while still keeping the patent monopoly within reasonable bounds. Despite the general unity in patent laws among developed countries, the difficulty of this …
How Not To Invent A Patent Crisis, F. Scott Kieff, Henry E. Smith
How Not To Invent A Patent Crisis, F. Scott Kieff, Henry E. Smith
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This short essay written for a broad audience addresses the problems that are at the center of current debates in academic and policy circles about the patent system. Most current patent reform proposals are designed to give officials and courts more power to weaken or eliminate ‘‘unworthy’’ patents and take primary aim at so-called patent trolls. This essay argues that in light of the rapid, and excessive, changes that have already occurred in the courts, what patent law needs is a tweaking of existing safety valves and processes - not opening the floodgates to more discretion and uncertainty.