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Can The Patent Office Be Fixed?, Mark A. Lemley
Can The Patent Office Be Fixed?, Mark A. Lemley
Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review
The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) finds itself caught in a vise. On the one hand, it has been issuing a large number of dubious patents over the past twenty years, particularly in the software and electronic commerce space. It issues many more patents than its counterparts in Europe and Japan; roughly three-fourths of applicants ultimately get one or more patents, a higher percentage than in other countries. Complaints about those bad patents are legion, and indeed, when they make it to litigation, they are quite often held invalid. Even the ones that turn out to be valid are often …
Medimmune V. Genentech: A Game-Theoretic Analysis Of The Supreme Court’S Continued Assault On The Patentee, Nicholas G. Smith
Medimmune V. Genentech: A Game-Theoretic Analysis Of The Supreme Court’S Continued Assault On The Patentee, Nicholas G. Smith
Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review
In 2007, the Supreme Court decided MedImmune v. Genentech. This decision changed the landscape of the patent licensing field by holding that a licensee in good standing may challenge the validity of a patent in a declaratory judgment action. By adding to the cost of entering a license agreement, MedImmune erodes one characteristic of a patent from which it derives its worth—the patent’s ability to be licensed. Unfortunately, this has decreased the incentive to innovate by decreasing the value of a patent. This Comment seeks to illustrate, using a game theoretic model, how MedImmune will increase litigation against patent …