Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Update On Patent-Related Cases In Computers And Electronics, Karishma Jiva Cartwright, Timothy T. Hsieh, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Articles

This paper provides an overview of patent cases relating to computer and electronics technology that were not taken up by the Supreme Court during the October 2022 term. As of this writing, the Supreme Court has not granted certiorari in any patent-related cases for its October 2021 Term. The Court has, however, called for the views of the Solictor General in four cases, indicating higher interest and raising the possibility that one or more of these cases may appear on the Court's merits docket for the October 2022 Term. Additionally, though the Court denied certiorari in Baxter v. Becton, Dickinson, …

A Patent Reformist Supreme Court And Its Unearthed Precedent, Samuel F. Ernst

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

How is it that the Supreme Court, a generalist court, is leading a project of innovation reform in our times while the court of appeals established to encourage innovation is having its precedent stricken down time and again? This decade the Supreme Court has issued far more patent law decisions than in any decade since the passage of the Patent Act of 1952. In doing so, the Supreme Court has overruled the Federal Circuit in roughly threequarters of the patent cases in which the Supreme Court has issued opinions. In most of these cases, the Supreme Court has established rules …

Brief Of Intellectual Property Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Westerngeco Llc V. Ion Geophysical Corp., No. 16-1011, Us Supreme Court, Timothy R. Holbrook, Ann Bartow, Dan L. Burk, Donald P. Harris, David C. Hricik, Amy L. Landers, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Lee Ann W. Lockridge, Jason Rantanen

All Faculty Scholarship

This amici curiae brief was filed on behalf of Intellectual Property Law Scholars in WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp. in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question presented is:

"Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred in holding that lost profits arising from prohibited combinations occurring outside of the United States are categorically unavailable in cases in which patent infringement is proven under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)."

In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 136 S. Ct. 2090 (2016), the Supreme Court articulated a two-step method for assessing the extraterritorial reach of a US statute:

1. …

The Supreme Court's Quiet Revolution In Induced Patent Infringement, Timothy R. Holbrook

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court over the last decade or so has reengaged with patent law. While much attention has been paid to the Court’s reworking of what constitutes patent-eligible subject matter and enhancing tools to combat “patent trolls,” what many have missed is the Court’s reworking of the contours of active inducement of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). The Court has taken the same number of § 271(b) cases as subject matter eligibility cases—four. Yet this reworking has not garnered much attention in the literature. This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the Court’s efforts to define active …

The Integrated Approach: A Solution To Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Standards In The Software Context, Carrie Moss

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Finders Keepers, Or Finders Weepers? A Proposed Answer To A Question Raised By Myriad Genetics, Jingshi Shi

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Myriad Stands Alone, Jacob S. Sherkow, Christopher T. Scott

Articles & Chapters

Myriad took no prisoners on its way to the top of the molecular diagnostics field. That strategy is unlikely to endure.

Myriad Genetics began in 1991 as a small University of Utah startup interested in the then-novel arena of diagnostic genetic testing. After winning a highly publicized race to sequence the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer genes, the company obtained patents on the gene sequences and methods of using them to determine cancer risk. The patents were broad and interlocking, covering BRCA genomic DNA, cDNA, methods of diagnosis and systems detecting mutations. Myriad also filed for diagnostic 'toolbox' patents, including …

Resale Price Maintenance: Consignment Agreements, Copyrighted Or Patented Products And The First Sale Doctrine, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The rule of reason adopted for resale price maintenance in the Supreme Court’s Leegin decision, which upset the century old Dr. Miles rule of per se illegality, requires some reconsideration of a number of issues about antitrust treatment of RPM. Under the old per se rule, bona fide “consignment” agreements were not covered by Section 1 of the Sherman Act at all because there was said to be no qualifying “agreement” between the supplier and the dealer. Rather the dealer was simply said to be acting as an agent of the seller. However, insofar as RPM produces competitive dangers, such …

Moral Philosophy, Information Technology, And Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

A plethora of philosophical issues arise where copyright and patent laws intersect with information technology. Given the necessary brevity of the chapter, my strategy will be to make general observations that can be applied to illuminate one particular issue. I have chosen the issue considered in MGM v. Grokster,² a recent copyright case from the U.S. Supreme Court Grokster, Ltd., provided a decentralized peer-to-peer technology that many people, typically students, used to copy and distribute music in ways that violated copyright law. The Supreme Court addressed the extent to which Grokster and other technology providers should be held …

Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Michigan Law Review

In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …

Thoughts On Dastar From A Copyright Perspective: A Welcome Step Toward Respite For The Public Domain, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

Though other questions remain unresolved and other leaks unstemmed, Dastar is a welcome step towards regaining the public domain, and towards establishing that the confines of the public domain, with regard to nondeceptive reproduction of public domain works, and preparation of derivative works based upon them, must be delimited by only the copyright and patent laws.

This article will provide a background discussion of the copyright and patent schemes and their delineation of the public domain. It then will discuss the role of trademark law in that balance, and some of the case law regarding both § 43 of the …

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: Implications Of Pfaff V. Wells Electronics, Inc. And The Quest For Predictability In The On-Sale Bar, Timothy R. Holbrook

Faculty Articles

This Article posits a two prong approach to the on-sale bar. First, for the anticipatory version, the courts should expressly incorporate the law of enablement under 35 U.S.C. § 112 and of utility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 into the on-sale bar, thus providing a well-known body of law to promote predictability. Procedurally, the courts should establish a hierarchy of evidence, similar to the approach used in claim construction, that considers certain, more readily available information as the most pertinent while eschewing the use of expert testimony and other litigation based evidence. Second, for the obviousness version of the on-sale …

The Copyright Monopoly After Sony Corp. Of America V. Universal City Studios, Inc.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Patents - The Changing Standard Of Patentable Invention: Confusion Compounded, John M. Webb S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In Lyon v. Bausch and Lomb Optical Co., Judge Learned Hand carefully analyzed the problem and took the position that Congress intended to modify the standard then applied by the Supreme Court and revive that used twenty-five years ago. He stated that under recent Supreme Court decisions he would be compelled to find the patent invalid, but upheld it on the basis of his interpretation of the new statute. This comment is directed not only to Judge Hand's interpretation, but also to the effect that his decision has had, and may be expected to have in the future, both …