Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Open Source Business Models And Synthetic Biology, Tej Singh

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The software industry has successfully utilized open source business models namely with software such as Android and Linux. Open source business models allow individuals to collaborate and share information without fear that the shared information will be commercially misused. Given the similarities between software source code and genetic sequences, innovators in the field of synthetic biology feel that open source business models can help further innovation for synthetic biology in a similar manner. However, when determining whether to join an open source project, practitioners must first identify if such a project will be beneficial to their goals. This Comment discuss …

Aspex Eyewear, Inc. V. Marchon Eyewear, Inc. And Brain Life, Llc. V. Elekta, Inc.: Irreconcilable Conflict In The Law Governing Claim Preclusion In Patent Cases, Christopher Petroni

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In 1991, the Federal Circuit held that a judgment on the merits in a patent infringement action bars future claims based on products that are “essentially the same” as the product at issue in the former suit. This rule governed claim preclusion in patent actions until at least 2009. Then, in 2012, the Federal Circuit upended the apple cart with Aspex Eyewear, Inc. v. Marchon Eyewear, Inc., 672 F.3d 1335 (Fed. Cir. 2012), holding that a judgment in an infringement suit never bars future claims against products that could not have been accused in the former litigation, essentially the …

The 101 Conundrum: Creating A Framework To Solve Problems Surrounding Interpretation Of 35 U.S.C. § 101, Robert Mazzola

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Federal Circuit's Obviousness Test For New Pharmaceutical Compounds: Gobbledygook?, Douglas L. Rogers

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Balancing Test: A Better Approach To Fair Use In Copyright, Charlie Penrod

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Fair use analyses are overly vague and abstract. While the Copyright Act established four factors for courts to consider when determining if an alleged infringer’s use of copyrighted work is “fair”, these factors are not susceptible to easy interpretation. More importantly, once these factors have been interpreted, a trier of fact is instructed to balance these factors against each other. No effective method currently exists in guiding courts as to how to balance inherently disparate factors against each other, either in terms of intensity of the factors or how one factor might balance against another totally different factor. This article …

Patent, But Where Is Home And Global Justice? A Rawlsian And Senian Inquiry, Deming Liu

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Mourning The Loss Of Copyright's Unsung Hero: Destruction Of The First Sale Doctrine, C. Todd Mosley

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Keeping It Under Wraps: Trade Secrecy For Offshore Asset Protection Plans, Thomas A. Brunty

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Silent Similarity, Jessica Litman

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form—silent movies—had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases—in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures—are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. In particular, the problem at the heart …

Mind-Movies: Original Authorship As Applied To Works From "Mind-Reading" Neurotechnology, Theo Austin Bruton

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

U.S. courts frequently analyze new technology under copyright law. Over the years, the courts have applied copyright law to photographic cameras, computer programs, digital video recorders, and much more. However, a recent breakthrough in the neuroscience community may force judges to apply copyright standards in an unorthodox fashion. A group of researchers at UC Berkeley devised a process that reconstructs video sequences from the human brain, essentially creating a movie from the person’s mind. As this neurotechnology develops, it is uncertain how judges will apply copyright law to content taken directly from the brain. Nevertheless, this Article argues that such …

The End Of (Meta) Search Engines In Europe?, Martin Husovec

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Trademark Extortionist Revisited: A Response To Vogel And Schachter, Kenneth L. Port

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Trademark bullying (a.k.a. trademark extortion) is a very controversial notion in trademark litigation in the United States. There, for sure, is a lot of illegitimate trademark infringement happening. Anecdotally, we also know that trademark holders often overstep in the assertion of their otherwise legitimate rights. For the first time, this article documents how large a problem trademark bullying is and how often it happens. Trademark bullying occurs when there is evidence that a trademark holder asserts a non-famous mark against a non-competing entity on or in connection with goods or services into which the plaintiff has no reasonable expectation of …

Keynote Address: Stalemate Or Statesmen: What Is Needed To Move Forward Constructively With The Balancing Of America's Ip System?, David J. Kappos

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Competing With The “Patent Court”: A Newly Robust Ecosystem, Arti K. Rai

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In a provocative address, Chief Judge Wood of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals suggests exposing the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, created in 1982 to hear all appeals from patent cases, to competition from sister appellate courts. This response, published as part of a Symposium on Chief Judge Wood's address, argues that competition is indeed desirable. Whether such competition is best provided by other appellate courts is unclear, however. The more tractable approach is to improve competitive input from sources that have already emerged. These include dissenting Federal Circuit judges, parties and amici who are not "patent …

Saving The Federal Circuit, Paul R. Gugliuzza

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In a recent, attention-grabbing speech, the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit, Diane Wood, argued that Congress should abolish the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases. Exclusive jurisdiction, she said, provides too much legal uniformity, which harms the patent system. In this response to Judge Wood’s thoughtful speech, I seek to highlight two important premises underlying her argument, neither of which is indisputably true.

The first premise is that the Federal Circuit actually provides legal uniformity. Judge Wood suggests that, due to the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction, patent doctrine is insufficiently “percolated,” meaning that it lacks mechanisms through which …

Federal Circuit Exclusive Appellate Patent Jurisdiction: A Response To Chief Judge Wood, Harold C. Wegner

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Globalizing Standard Of Patent Protection In Wto Law And Policy Options For The Ldcs: The Context Of Bangladesh, M. Monirul Azam

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

This Article analyzes the globalizing standard of patent protection as adopted under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and possible options for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) such as Bangladesh against the experiences of Brazil, India, and South Africa with special reference to pharmaceutical patent issues.

It’S Blonder-Tongue All Over Again, Alex Kozinski, Daniel Mandell

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Managing The Changes To The Oath Or Declaration Requirement: The Effect Of The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act Oath Or Declaration Change On Corporations, Adam Thompson

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Online Tracking: Can The Free Market Create Choice Where None Exists?, Benjamin Strauss

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Reconciling Twombly And Patent Pleadings Beyond The Text Of Form 18, Yoonhee Kim

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Abolishing Exclusive Jurisdiction In The Federal Circuit: A Response To Judge Wood, Rochelle C. Dreyfus

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Part of a symposium of responses to Chief Judge Wood’s suggestion for giving regional circuits a share of the Federal Circuit’s authority over patent law, this article argues that now that a degree of nationwide uniformity in patent law has been achieved, it would be a pity to disrupt it. While Chief Judge Wood is right that the law would improve with percolation, a change in the composition of the court, new procedures for challenging patents in the Patent and Trademark Office, a District Court pilot program, and satellite patent offices will bring to the debate new voices, different kinds …

Open Innovation In Plant Genetic Resources For Food And Agriculture, Chidi Oguamanam

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Contemporary global order for the promotion of innovation exaggerates the role of intellectual property (IP) as a closed proprietary model of knowledge production and protection. Partly as a boomerang effect of that order or partly as a coincidence of the phenomenal rise in the information and communication technologies or both, there has been increased gravitation toward open, collaborative, shared, communal and interdependent models of innovation. This trend is typified by the rise of open software movement and cognate endeavours. The article attempts to transpose the open innovation dynamic to the context of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGFA); …

Litigating Inequitable Conduct After Therasense, Exerge, And The Aia: Lessons For Litigants, Options For Owners, Lisa A. Dolak

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Significant recent judicial and legislative developments have changed the way litigants and counsel need to plan for and litigate inequitable conduct allegations. Exergen and Therasense have heightened the standards for pleading and proving inequitable conduct, respectively, and Congress has expanded the patentee’s post-grant options for preempting or defeating inequitable conduct challenges. Without a doubt, the inequitable conduct litigation landscape has changed. Careful, thorough consideration of all of these developments and their implications is a must for any litigant or counsel faced with or considering asserting a charge of inequitable conduct. This paper discusses these significant recent inequitable conduct-related developments and …

Not All Patents Are Created Equal: Bias Against Predictable Arts Patents In The Post-Ksr Landscape, David Tseng

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Next Generation Copyright Misuse, Rebecca Sundin

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Recent Decisions Provide Some Clarity On How Courts And Government Agencies Will Likely Resolve Issues Involving Standard-Essential Patents, Steven M. Amundson

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Rebuttable Presumption Of Public Interest In Protecting The Public Health --The Necessity For Denying Injunctive Relief In Medically-Related Patent Infringement Cases After Ebay V. Mercexchange, Lance Wyatt

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The public’s interest in medicine and good health is substantial. However, this interest is harmed when important medical devices or pharmaceuticals, although infringing on valid patents, are suddenly taken off the market after a court grants a permanent injunction. While permanent injunctions were automatically granted by the Federal Circuit before the Supreme Court’s holding in eBay v. MercExchange, courts now have more discretion to deny injunctive relief. Now that courts have this newfound discretion after eBay, the public should no longer expect to be harmed by the sudden removal of medical supplies. Unfortunately, this has not been the course that …

Hijacking Shared Heritage: Cultural Artifacts And Intellectual Property Rights, Amy Hackney Blackwell, Christopher William Blackwell

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

All Together Now: The Family Of Marks Doctrine In The Era Of Apple, Inc., Austin Berger

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

While a significant doctrine within common law trademark, the family of marks doctrine has not been utilized by as many dominant corporations within the fifty years since its creation as one might expect. This may be because the doctrine and its analysis remains rather opaque with little substantive legal research devoted to its history and framework and with a pastiche of case law that, on first blush, fails to signal a clear, uniform approach among the circuits. The doctrine itself, however, has been a deft tool in the hands of certain corporations who have used it to protect the prized …