Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Legal Lessons From A Very Fast Problem: Covid-19, Eric E. Johnson, Theodore Bailey

Faculty Articles

The course of a pandemic is as much a function of social structures as protein structures. Law is among the most important of these social structures, and it is among those most capable of the kind of rapid adaptation that is needed against an exponentially replicating virus. Thus, there is an urgent need to scrutinize the role of the law in impeding or supporting timely and effective measures to combat the great pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its associated malady, coronavirus disease 2019, better known as COVID-19. This Essay offers a look back on …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Illusory Conflicts: Post-Employment Clearance Procedures And The Ftc’S Technological Expertise, Lindsey Barrett, Laura M. Moy, Paul Ohm, Ashkan Soltani

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The federal government restricts what former employees can work on after they leave the government, and for good reason. These post-employment conflict restrictions attempt to address the “revolving door” problem, where employees take information learned from their position in government to unfairly advantage industry. But an unintended consequence of overbroad conflict rules is that they impede well-meaning, former federal employees from providing their knowledge and general expertise to other enforcement agencies with similar missions, such as those at the state level. This is playing out right now with FTC technologists, at a time when the agency—and, indeed, consumer protection agencies …

Case Law On American Indians August 2018-2019, Thomas P. Schlosser

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Georgia V. Public.Resource.Org, Inc.: Brief Of Amici Curiae Law Professors Nina Mendelson, Alan Morrison, Anne Joseph O'Connell, And Peter Strauss In Support Of Respondent, Nina A. Mendelson

Appellate Briefs

Amici are professors of administrative law with particular expertise in government transparency, including issues such as the incorporation by reference of private standards into over 9,000 federal regulations. Amici have a strong interest in the development of administrative and copyright law in a manner that enables simple and universal access without charge to regulatory law. As scholars of federal incorporation by reference of private standards, amici write separately to urge the Court to reaffirm the application of the government edicts doctrine to all text that a government has adopted as the law. In particular, the government edicts doctrine applies to …

Disguised Patent Policymaking, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

Patent Office power has grown immensely in this decade, and the agency is wielding its power in predictably troubling ways. Like other agencies, it injects politics into its decisions while relying on technocratic justifications. It also reads grants of authority expansively to aggrandize its power, especially to the detriment of judicial checks on agency action. However, this story of Patent Office ascendancy differs from that of other agencies in two important respects. One is that the U.S. patent system still remains primarily a means for allocating property rights, not a comprehensive regime of industrial regulation. Thus, the Patent Office cannot …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Functional Approach To Judicial Review Of Ptab Rulings On Mixed Questions Of Law And Fact, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) has long relied on active appellate review to bring uniformity and clarity to patent law. It initially treated the PTO the same as the federal district courts, reviewing its factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. Following reversal by the Supreme Court in Dickinson v. Zurko, the Federal Circuit began giving greater deference to PTO factual findings. But it continued to review the PTO’s legal conclusions de novo, while coding an expansive list of disputed issues in patent cases as legal conclusions, even when they …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Circuit As An Institution, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is a unique institution. Unlike other circuit courts, the Federal Circuit’s jurisdiction is bound by subject area rather than geography, and it was created to address a unique set of problems specific to patent law. These characteristics have affected its institutional development and made the court one of the most frequently studied appellate courts. This chapter examines this development and describes the evolving qualities that have helped the Federal Circuit distinguish itself, for better or worse, as an institution.

This chapter begins with an overview of the concerns existing before creation of …

Auer Deference Should Be Dead; Long Live Seminole Rock Deference, John B. Meisel

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Deference doctrines should be understood in light of the Administrative Procedures Act’s distinction between legislative rules and interpretive rules and should be based on a solid theoretical foundation. Modern Auer deference calls for categorical deference for an agency’s regulatory interpretation of an ambiguous regulation. This is inconsistent with the APA’s characterization of the purpose of an interpretive rule. Properly construed, interpretive rules clarify the meaning of a legal text which should be justified by use of expository reasoning. These rules deserve a lesser form of deference (Skidmore deference), based on an agency’s unique understanding of its own regulations which …

Machine Learning At The Patent Office: Lessons For Patents And Administrative Law, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

The empirical data indicate that a relatively small increment of additional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“Patent Office” or “USPTO”) investment in prior art search at the initial examination stage could be a cost-effective mechanism for improving accuracy in the patent system. This contribution argues that machine learning provides a promising arena for such investment. Notably, the use of machine learning in patent examination does not raise the same potent concerns about individual rights and discrimination that it raises in other areas of administrative and judicial process. To be sure, even an apparently easy case like prior art search at …

Irrational Ignorance At The Patent Office, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

There is widespread belief that the Patent Office issues too many bad patents that impose significant harms on society. At first glance, the solution to the patent quality crisis seems straightforward: give patent examiners more time to review applications so they grant patents only to those inventions that deserve them. Yet the answer to the harms of invalid patents may not be that easy. It is possible that the Patent Office is, as Mark Lemley famously wrote, “rationally ignorant.” In Rational Ignorance at the Patent Office, Lemley argued that because so few patents are economically significant, it makes sense to …

Patent Trial And Appeal Board's Consistency-Enhancing Function, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

Agency heads, who have the primary responsibility for setting an agency's policy preferences, have a variety of tools by which they attempt to minimize the discretion of their staff officials in an effort to ensure agency policy preferences are consistently applied. One such mechanism is subjecting agency official's determinations to higher-level agency review. While scholars have long surmised that judges seek to minimize reversal of their decisions by a higher-level court, how agency officials' decisions are influenced by higher-level agency reconsideration has mostly eluded analysis.

In this Essay, we begin to fill this gap by examining the extent to which …

Patent Trolls, Nuisance Suits, And The Federal Trade Commission, Matthew Spitzer

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) Patent Assertion Entity Activity Report (“The Report”) includes a path-breaking collection of data. The Report was compiled with the object of changing policy, both in Congress and before the courts. Because of the FTC’s ability to force businesses and individuals to provide information, a power that no ordinary researcher possesses, the FTC has amassed a data set that can potentially be of great value. For example, the Report’s description of litigation Patent Assertion Entities’ (“PAEs”) and portfolio PAEs’ structure and behavior is, although not entirely new, very instructive. Unfortunately, the FTC made analytical errors that …

The Porous Court-Agency Border In Patent Law, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

The progression toward reevaluating patent validity in the administrative, rather than judicial, setting became overtly substitutionary in the America Invents Act. No longer content to encourage court litigants to rely on Patent Office expertise for faster, cheaper, and more accurate validity decisions, Congress in the AIA took steps to force a choice. The result is an emergent border between court and agency power in the U.S. patent system. By design, the border is not absolute. Concurrent activity in both settings over the same dispute remains possible. What is troubling is the systematic weakening of this border by Patent Office encroachments …

Are There Really Two Sides Of The Claim Construction Coin? The Application Of The Broadest Reasonable Interpretation At The Ptab, Paula Miller, Marianne Terrot, Stacy Lewis, Tom Irving

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The USPTO has applied the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) claim construction standard during prosecution, reexamination, and other office proceedings for decades. The Supreme Court affirmed in Cuozzo Speed Technologies Inc. that BRI is also the appropriate standard for unexpired claims in post-grant proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Leading up to Cuozzo, many parties speculated that the PTAB’s application of BRI might create confusion and result in inconsistent outcomes at the district court level. Notably, nothing in the America Invents Act establishes a standard of deference between PTAB and district court decisions. But so far, there has …

Master Of The Petition: Exploring The Tension Between The Ptab And Petitioners In Controlling The Scope Of Aia Trials, Raja N. Saliba, Grant Shackelford

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Precedential Decisions At The Ptab: An Endangered Species?, Robert M. Yeh Ph.D

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

This Article describes the USPTO’s practice of designating certain opinions as precedential, informative, or representative and compares it to the practice of issuing precedential opinions at other agencies that conduct quasi-judicial proceedings. The Article explores the impact of these agency practices on stare decisis. It concludes that the USPTO should simplify its designation process, increase the number of precedential opinions, and by doing so improve consistency and predictability.

Without Clear Rules, Ptab Practices May Run Afoul Of The Apa, Arpita Bhattacharyya, Rachel L. Emsley

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Ptab Precedential Decision: Putting The Hammer Down On Filing Serial Petitions?, Ashley N. Klein, Warren J. Thomas

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Petitioners for inter partes review proceedings under the America Invents Act routinely file serial petitions to challenge a single patent. Patent owners have criticized such “follow-on” petitions as abusive. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s recent precedential opinion in General Plastic Industrial Co. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, IPR2016-01357, Paper 19 (P.T.A.B. Sept. 6, 2017), lays out seven non-exhaustive factors to guide the Board’s consideration of such “follow-on” petitions. This Article summarizes the Board’s analysis of follow-on petitions prior to General Plastic, examines how General Plastic has affected petitioners’ success in having such petitions instituted, and suggests strategies for practitioners …

To Stay Or Not To Stay Pending Ipr? That Should Be A Simpler Question, Joel Sayres, Julie Wahlstrand

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Ignoring Administrative Decisions Through Settlement: A Holistic Approach, Vincent Escoto

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

"Too Big To Foia": How Agencies Avoid Compliance With The Freedom Of Information Act, Stephanie Alvarez-Jones

Cardozo Law Review

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), while foundational for promoting government transparency, faces significant challenges in its administration, particularly through the judicially created "undue burden" claim, which allows agencies to evade disclosure. The note argues that courts' deference to agencies' claims of undue burden undermines FOIA's purpose of promoting openness. It proposes reforms, such as a public interest sliding scale, to balance the burden on agencies against the public's right to know, ensuring FOIA remains an effective tool for accountability.

The Tortoise And The Hare Of International Data Privacy Law: Can The United States Catch Up To Rising Global Standards?, Matthew Humerick

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Technological developments spur the development of big data on a global scale. The breadth of data companies collect, maintain, process, and transmit affects nearly every country and organization around the world. Inherent to big data are issues of data protection and transfers to third countries. While many jurisdictions emphasize the importance of protecting consumer data, such as the European Union, others, like the United States, do not. To circumvent this issue, the United States and European Union contracted around data privacy standard discrepancies through the Safe Harbor Agreement, which eased cross-border data transfers. However, the Court of Justice of the …

The Limits Of Copyright Office Expertise, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

The mismatch between the expanding administrative and regulatory obligations of the United States Copyright Office and its limited institutional expertise is an emerging problem for the copyright system. The Office’s chief responsibility—registration and recordation of copyright claims—has taken a back seat in recent years to a more ambitious set of substantive rulemakings and policy recommendations. As the triennial rulemaking under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act highlights, the Office is frequently called upon to answer technological questions far beyond its plausible claims of subject matter expertise. This Article traces the Office’s history, identifies its substantial but discrete areas of expertise, and …

Federal Circuit Jurisdiction: Looking Back And Thinking Forward, Timothy B. Dyk

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Landscape Of Modern Patent Appeals, Jason Rantaned

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court Puts The Brakes On Cuozzo Speed Technologies: Investigating The Intersection Of Administrative Law And The Judiciary, Jason Kuchar

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

The "Broadest Reasonable Interpretation" And Applying Issue Preclusion To Administrative Patent Claim Construction, Jonathan I. Tietz

Michigan Law Review

Inventions are tangible. Yet patents comprise words, and words are imprecise. Thus, disputes over patents involve a process known as “claim construction,” which formally clarifies the meaning of a patent claim’s words and, therefore, the scope of the underlying property right. Adversarial claim construction commonly occurs in various Article III and Article I settings, such as district courts or the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). When these proceedings ignore each other’s claim constructions, a patent’s scope can become inconsistent and unpredictable. The doctrine of issue preclusion could help with this problem. The Supreme Court recently reemphasized in B & …