Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Chasing Echos Of Obscenity Exceptionalism In Copyright: Recent Swarm Cases, James R. Alexander

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Recent district court rulings regarding copyright violations using BitTorrent file-sharing protocols to illegally download pornographic films have been numerous and largely procedural. But some have casually included language challenging the established doctrine of content neutrality in copyright, noting that obscenity exceptionalism might still be within the court’s policy discretion. This article traces these recent rulings and finds little substantive argument on behalf of exceptionalism other than its long-time understanding under common law, now abandoned. It also examines the critical early nineteenth century common law rulings considered seminal in establishing content exceptionalism in copyright and finds that current court references to …

Patent Exhaustion Connects Common Law To Equity: Impression Products, Inc. V. Lexmark International, Inc., Kumiko Kitaoka

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Permission Impossible: An Exception-Based Legislative Solution For Digitizing Copyright-Protected Works, Connor J. Hansen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Road To Marshall: Of Venue, Trolls, And The Eastern District Of Texas, Jesus Efren Cano

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Diluted Reality: The Intersection Of Augmented Reality And Trademark Dilution, Ariane Takano

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

European Parliament Resolution Of 9 July 2015 And Its Progeny: Why The Digital Age Demands A Single European Copyright Title, Kevin J. Cammiso

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Innovators Beat The Climate Change Heat With Humanitarian Licensing And Patent Pools, Andrea Nocito

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

May You Live In Interesting Times: Patent Law In The Supreme Court, Seth P. Waxman

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Complex Innovation And The Patent Office, Ryan Whalen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

As the universe of available information becomes larger and innovation becomes more complex, the task of examining patent applications becomes increasingly difficult. This Article argues that the United States Patent Office has insufficiently responded to changes in the information universe and to innovation norms. This leaves the Patent Office less able to adequately assess patent applications, and more likely to grant bad patents. After first demonstrating how innovation has been responsive to contemporary innovation norms for hundreds of years, this Article uses information and data science methods to empirically demonstrate how innovation has drastically changed in recent decades. After empirically …

Brief For 72 Professors Of Intellectual Property Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents In Oil States Energy V. Greene's Energy, Gregory Reilly, Mark Lemley, Arti Rai

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a brief of 72 IP professors opposing the claim in Oil States that the IPR procedure is unconstitutional.Petitioner argues that only a court – indeed, only a jury – has the power to decide that the United States Patent and Trademark Office erred in granting a patent. That argument flies in the face of the history of patent law and this Court’s precedents.Patents are a creature of statute: as early as 1834, this Court specifically recognized that there is no “natural” or common law right to a patent. Rather, under its Article I power to establish a patent …

The Cessation Of Innovation: An Inquiry Into Whether Congress Can And Should Strip The Supreme Court Of Its Appellate Jurisdiction To Entertain Patent Cases, Catherine Taylor

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brexit And Ip: The Great Unraveling?, Graeme Dinwoodie, Rochelle Dreyfuss

All Faculty Scholarship

In theory, exit from Brexit will free the United Kingdom from the constraints and burdens of EU membership. It will transfer sovereignty back to the people from the technocratic rule of Brussels; replace the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice with the adjudicative power of national courts; and allow the UK to tailor its market regulation in the particular exigencies of the UK economy. Whether, as a general matter, the restoration of a classic Westphalian state enhances value either nationally or globally is an issue we leave to others to debate.We ask a different question: we explore how well the …

Italian Perspective On The Importance Of Geographical Indications And Protected Designation Of Origin Status For Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese, Margherita Corrado

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Blockchain Receipts: Patentability And Admissibility In Court, Angela Guo

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Patentability Of The Crispr-Cas9 Genome Editing Tool, Deborah Ku

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The biotechnology sector is rapidly changing with the increase in technological advancements. 1 The laws governing patent protection, specifically the laws governing patent eligibility, have also changed to adapt to these innovations.2 This paper focuses on the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, a genome editing tool that is changing the field of genetic engineering.3 As of November 2016, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 42 patents on the CRISPR-Cas9 technology.4 This paper addresses the issue of whether patents claiming the core CRISPR-Cas9 technology can survive a 35 U.S.C. §101 (“§101”) subject matter eligibility challenge. The paper concludes that the CRISPR-Cas9 technology …

When Copyright Is Not Enough: Deconstructing Why, As The Modern Music Industry Takes, Musicians Continue To Make, Glenton Davis

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

How Much Has The Supreme Court Changed Patent Law, Paul Gugliuzza

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided a remarkable number of patent cases in the past decade, particularly as compared to the first twenty years of the Federal Circuit’s existence. No longer is the Federal Circuit “the de facto Supreme Court of patents,” as Mark Janis wrote in 2001. Rather, it seems the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court of patents. In the article at the center of this symposium, Judge Timothy Dyk of the Federal Circuit writes that the Supreme Court’s decisions “have had a major impact on patent law,” citing, among other evidence, the Court’s seventy percent reversal rate …

Ip Law Post-Brexit, Graeme Dinwoodie, Richard Arnold, Lionel Bently, Estelle Derclaye

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Modifying Amateurism: A Performance-Based Solution To Compensating Student–Athletes For Licensing Their Names, Images, And Likenesses, Chaz Gross

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Amateurism is evolving and the NCAA is paying for it. With the NCAA’s focus set on preserving amateurism, it prohibited student–athlete compensation for any activity related to sports. However, college athletics are a lucrative business that generates its primary revenue from licensing Division I men’s basketball and FBS football players’ names, images, and likenesses. After years of criticism for its rules and regulations, the NCAA faced antitrust scrutiny from both former and current student–athletes. In 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the NCAA’s restrictions on student–athlete compensation violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. While the …

How Can The Supreme Court Not “Understand” Patent Law?, Gregory Reilly

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The Supreme Court does understand patent law. This invited Essay responds to Federal Circuit Judge Dyk’s remarks at the Chicago-Kent Supreme Court IP Review, in particular, his observation that the patent “bar and the academy have expressed skepticism that the Supreme Court understands patent law well enough to make the governing rules” (a view Judge Dyk did not endorse). The idea that the Supreme Court does not understand the law of patents is implausible. Even more generous interpretations of this criticism – that the Supreme Court insufficiently understands innovation policy, insufficiently understands the patent system that Congress desired in creating …

Response To Judge Timothy B. Dyk, Donald R. Dunner

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Is The Supreme Court Concerned With Patent Law, The Federal Circuit, Or Both: A Response To Judge Timothy B. Dyk, Timothy R. Holbrook

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

This essay is a response to Hon. Timothy B. Dyk, Thoughts on the Relationship Between the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, 16 CHI.-KENT J. OF INTELL. PROP. 67 (2016). In it, I address the reasons for the Supreme Court's engagement with patent law. In other words, is the Court interested in patent law itself, or is there something about the Federal Circuit as an institution that has garnered the Court's gaze. I conclude it is a combination of the two. The Court is concerned with certain aspects of patent doctrine, but it is also concerned with the Federal Circuit, …

Abuse Of Supreme Court Precedent: The "Historic Kinship", David W. Barnes

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, the Supreme Court applied a doctrine formulated for patent law to an issue arising in copyright law. The Court supplied a rationale for doing so by identifying a “historic kinship” between patent and copyright law based on fundamental goals of intellectual property law. The Court considered how the rationale applied in the particular factual context involved. The Court cautioned that the propriety of extending a doctrine developed in one intellectual property regime to another depends on the particular legal issue involved. Despite the importance of ensuring that new rules are …

With Enough Eyeballs All Searches Are Diligent: Mobilizing The Crowd In Copyright Clearance For Mass Digitization, Maurizio Borghi, Kris Erickson, Marcella Favale

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Digitization of 20th Century cultural heritage is severely restricted due to the real or potential subsistence of copyright and related rights. Under the laws on orphan works introduced in many countries, items whose copyright status is uncertain may possibly be lawfully digitized, on condition that a “diligent search” of the copyright owners has been performed. However, carrying out diligent searches on large collections is a lengthy and expensive process, which may discourage institutional users from embarking on large-scale digitization. While the problem of performing diligent searches has been so far approached in a “centralized” manner by individual institutions, the article …

The Time Is Nigh: A Proposal For An International Patent System, Ben Mceniery

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The world is slowly but inexorably moving towards adopting an integrated global patent system. It is inevitable that the present inefficient and splintered system in which patents must be separately obtained and enforced in each nation state must evolve to make obtaining global patent protection an achievable proposition for those other than just the wealthiest multinational corporations. The global patent system proposed in this article allows a patent applicant to file a single patent application in an international patent office, have that patent application examined in accordance with a uniform patentability standard, and results in the grant of a unitary …

Open Source Tactics: Bargaining Power For Strategic Litigation, James Skelley

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Patent Trolls: Patent Assertion Entities As Commercial Litigation Funders, Jean Xiao

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

This paper is the first to defend and commend the role of patent trolls in litigation. It argues that trolls either are not the sole source of patent litigation ills or are not responsible for these ills in the first place. Next, it demonstrates that trolls provide the same litigation-related benefits as commercial litigation funders, which also finance patent lawsuits. Troll commentators have ignored these benefits, for which funders are praised, in the evaluation of trolls. Finally, this paper explains that eliminating trolls will not only close off a source of these benefits but also worsen problems by shifting trolling …

Whither (Wither?) Geographical Indications? The Case Against Geographical Indications And For Appellations Of Origin In An Era Of Glocalization, Benjamin Robert Hopper

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

One of the most hotly contested legal debates in international intellectual property law today concerns geographical indications (GIs) and appellations of origin (AOOs), referred to herein using the umbrella term “indication of origin” (IO). Central to the debate are two different systems for IOs—the sui generis system of AOOs and the like promoted by IO advocates like the EU (generally civil law jurisdictions) and the system promoted by IO skeptics like the US (generally common law jurisdictions) under which GIs are subsumed within a pre-existing trademark system. These divergent IO systems are manifestations of deepening fragmentation in the international IO …

Thoughts On The Relationship Between The Supreme Court And The Federal Circuit, Timothy B. Dyk

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Why The Supreme Court Should Use Ariosa V. Sequenom To Provide Further Guidance On U.S.C. § 101 Patent Eligibility, Naira Rezende Simmons

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

35 U.S.C. § 101 provides patent protection to “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” The Supreme Court previously concluded that Congress intended patentable subject matter to “include anything under the sun that is made by man.” Nevertheless, over the past five years the U.S. Supreme Court has made a series of decisions that narrowed the scope of subject matter eligible for patent protection.

In Mayo the court held that correlations between the concentrations of a metabolite in the blood and the concentration of a drug are not patent …