Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Meddimmune, Microsoft, And Ksr: The United States Supreme Court In 2007 Tips The Balance In Favor Of Innovation In Patent Cases, And Thrice Reverses The Federal Circuit, Sue Ann Mota

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In 2007 the Supreme Court reversed three patent cases from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The three cases were MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. (holding a patent licensee does not have to breach a license agreement before seeking declaratory judgment that the underlying patent is invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed), Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp. (holding Microsoft did not supply a component of an invention from the United States that had the possibility of infringing under the Patent Act), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (holding the requirement of non-obviousness under the Patent Act is analyzed …

Antitrust Liability For Refusal To License Intellectual Property: A Comparative Analysis And The International Setting, Rita Coco

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Antitrust and IP law both share the goals of promoting innovation and benefiting consumers. A potential for conflict exists, however, when a dominant firm's refusal to license IP rights affects the dynamics of competition. Antitrust intervention in IP rights can reduce incentives to invest, whereas a failure to allow anticompetitive behavior can harm consumers and competitors while reducing the efficiency of the economic system. The author reviews the European and United States approaches to monopolization claims involving IP rights. The European approach is limited by the mismatch between national enforcement of IP rights and community enforcement of antitrust law. The …

Speaking Words Of Wisdom: Let It Be: The Reexamination Of The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Patents, Julia Vom Wege Dovi

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Embryonic stem cell research represents an area of scientific inquiry that bears great promise, and patent law ensures that stem cell technology is both protected and utilized to its fullest potential. This article analyzes why the USPTO should not invalidate or narrow three challenged stem cell patents owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) through the Public Patent Foundation. The author outlines the science behind stem cells, explains the applicable law, and articulates the policy considerations relevant to patent law and stem cells. Ultimately, the author argues that that the challenged patents should remain valid because they have not …

Research Tool Patents After Integra V. Merck - Have They Reached A Safe Harbor, Wolrad Prinz

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The saga surrounding the Integra v. Merck cases has rekindled a heated debate about the proper scope of both common law exemption and the safe harbor provision, causing significant concern for owners of research tool patents. This Article will argue that the next judicial decision addressing the question of research tool patents should clarify that they are in a safe harbor because none of the two exemptions from infringement referenced above extends to the use of research tools in experiments in order to preserve the necessary incentives for their creation in the first place. Allowing access to research tools under …

Acquiring Innovation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

In recent years, the innovation market has witnessed a new business model involving companies that are mere patent holding shells and not operating entities. They have no customers or products to offer, but they do have an aggressive tactic of using patent portfolios to threaten other operating companies with potential infringement litigation. The strategy is executed with the end goal of extracting handsome settlements. Acquisitions of patents for offensive use have become a major concern to operating companies because such acquisitions pose the threats of patent injunction, interrupting the business and crippling further innovation.

While many operating companies today know …

Users As Innovators: Implications For Patent Doctrine, Katherine J. Strandburg

University of Colorado Law Review

User innovators range from commercial firms, which invent new production methods in expectation of competitive advantage, to individual hobbyists motivated entirely by their enjoyment of the inventive process. In this Article, I consider the implications for patent doctrine of the fact that many user innovators derive sufficient benefit simply from developing and using their inventions to motivate them to invest the effort necessary to invent them. Moreover, user innovators often benefit from "freely revealing" their innovations to others. Trade secrecy and patenting are not central to motivating this inventive activity. This picture of user innovation contrasts sharply with the seller …

Beyond Microsoft: Intellectual Property, Peer Production And The Law’S Concern With Market Dominance., Daryl Lim

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fixing Through Legislative Fixation: A Call For The Codification And Modernization Of The Staple Article Of Commerce Doctrine As It Applies To Copyright Law, Blake Evan Reese

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Courts have misinterpreted and disagreed over how to apply relevant principles of patent law to copyright cases in an effort to strike a balance between protecting copyright holders' rights without restricting innovation. The author argues that courts have inflicted damage upon the balance of copyright's competing policies, leaving copyright owners and technology innovators facing great uncertainty. The author's Comment addresses the development of the Staple Defense and the logical reasoning supporting a new legislative proposal.

An Empirical Look At Software Patents, James Bessen, Robert M. Hunt

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. legal changes have made it easier to obtain patents on inventions that use software. Software patents have grown rapidly and now comprise 15 percent of all patents. They are acquired primarily by large manufacturing firms in industries known for strategic patenting; only 5 percent belong to software publishers. The very large increase in software patent propensity over time is not adequately explained by changes in R&D investments, employment of computer programmers, or productivity growth. The residual increase in patent propensity is consistent with a sizeable rise in the cost effectiveness of software patents during the 1990s. We find evidence …

Ip And The Global Public Interest: Challenges And Opportunities, Jon R. Cavicchi, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt from article] Intellectual property (IP) capacity is essential for economic development, particularly as countries transition into the higher technology sectors, for example biotechnology. For developing countries, a commitment to minimal IP rights protection will determine inclusion in the World Trade Organization (WTO), facilitate access to foreign-direct investment, and accelerate economic development. However, on a more fundamental level, capacity in IP management will affect whether a country can provide basic health and nutritional needs for its citizens. For example, sustainable food security presents a serious challenge in many developing countries; as their economies rapidly emerge, urban centers expand, arable land …

Pharmaceutical Lemons: Innovation And Regulation In The Drug Industry, Ariel Katz

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Before a new drug can be marketed, the Food and Drug Administration must be satisfied that it is safe and effective. According to conventional wisdom, the cost and delay involved in this process diminish the incentives to invest in the development of new drugs. Accordingly, several reforms aimed at restoring such incentives have been implemented or advocated. This Article challenges the central argument that drug regulation and drug innovation are necessarily at odds with one another. Although intuitively appealing, the argument that drug regulation negatively affects the incentives to innovate does not fully capture the role that regulation plays in …

The Proper Scope Of Patentability In International Law, Shawn J. Kolitch

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Patent law encourages innovation, but the harm caused by some inventions may outweigh the benefits of disclosure. This article examines the environmental and public health consequences of patent laws around the world and argues that the patent incentive should be selectively removed to mitigate the harmful effects of granting patents without regard to the invention-specific impacts of doing so.

The Role Of The Fda In Innovation Policy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article reexamines the role of FDA regulation in motivating investment in biopharmaceutical innovation. I begin by challenging the standard story that it is the patent system that makes drug development profitable, and drug regulation that makes it costly, by showing how patents add to costs and how drug regulation works in tandem with patents to protect profits. I then compare FDA-administered exclusive rights to patents as a means of fortifying drug development incentives, suggesting ways that FDA-administered rights might be preferable both from the perspective of policy makers and from the perspective of firms. In the remainder of the …

Patents And Diversity In Innovation, Brian Kahin

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Over the past quarter-century, the patent system has expanded in scope and significance, claiming a central position in a U.S. economy increasingly based on knowledge and intangible assets. This historic expansion has come at the cost of controversy and, within the past five years, growing public scrutiny from outside the system--from the press, business, Congress, and finally the Supreme Court. However, proposed reforms are marked by deepening divisions between sectors of the economy. The information technology (IT) and services industries favor strong reforms while pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as well as the patent bar, favor modest, incremental reforms. This yawning …

Economics And The Design Of Patent Systems, Robert M. Hunt

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

I use intuition derived from several of my research papers to make three points. First, in the absence of a common law balancing test, application of uniform patentability criteria favors some industries over others. Policymakers must decide the optimal tradeoff across industries. Second, if patent rights are not closely related to the underlying inventions, more patenting may reduce R&D in industries that are both R&D and patent intensive. Third, the U.S. private innovation system has become far more decentralized than it was a generation ago. It is reasonable to inquire whether a patent system that worked well in an era …

Knowledge, Competition And The Innovation: Is Stronger Ipr Protection Really Needed For More And Better Innovations, Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Marengo, Corrado Pasquali

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The main questions addressed in this Article are thus: given that growth is a highly desirable phenomenon and that it is primarily spurred by technological innovation, how should society solve the problem of favoring a sufficient level of investments in R&D? In particular, is it necessarily true and always desirable that, independent of any other consideration, society should protect innovators from competition and shelter them in a legally protected and enforced monopoly? Is it true that the real source of economic value of new recipes is only found in the blueprints of ideas that those recipes implement? Is it necessarily …

The Value Of U.S. Patents By Owner And Patent Characteristics, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of U.S. patents, controlling for patent and owner characteristics. Estimates of U.S. patent value are substantially larger than estimates for European patents, however, the ratio of U.S. patent value to R&D for firms is only about 3%. Patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations, perhaps reflecting imperfect markets for technology. Litigated patents are more valuable, as are highly cited patents. However, patent citations explain little variance in value, suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality.

Why Pharmaceutical Firms Support Patent Trolls: The Disparate Impact Of Ebay V. Mercexchange On Innovation, Jeremiah S. Helm

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Before the unanimous decision in eBay v. MercExchange, patent holders were almost always granted an injunction against an infringer. In fact, the Federal Circuit, in deciding eBay, noted that, upon a finding of infringement, an injunction would issue unless there were extraordinary circumstances. The Court, in a brief opinion, disagreed with the Federal Circuit and explained that the injunction issue in a patent case must be analyzed under the traditional four-factor test.[...] Is the four-factor test fairer or better than the Federal Circuit's near-automatic injunction rule? It is certainly more difficult to administer a factor test as compared to a …

A Comment On "Do Patents Facilitate Financing In The Software Industry?", James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

'Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?' by Ronald J. Mann contributes empirical evidence to our understanding of how software startups use patents. However, a close examination of the actual empirical findings in this paper points to rather different conclusions than those that Mann draws, namely: few software startups benefit from software patents and patents are not widely used by software firms to obtain venture financing. Indeed, among other things, the paper reports that 80% of venture-financed software startups had no acquired any patents within four years of receiving financing.

Pathological Patenting: The Pto As Cause Or Cure, Rochelle Dreyfuss

Michigan Law Review

The Patent Act was last revised in 1952. The hydrogen bomb was exploded that year, vividly demonstrating the power of the nucleus; in the ensuing postwar period, the Next Big Thing was clearly the molecule. Novel compounds were synthesized in the hopes of finding new medicines; solid-state devices exploited the special characteristics of germanium and other semiconductors; as investments in polymer chemistry soared, advice to the college graduate soon boiled down to "one word ... just one word[:] ... Plastics." Over the next half-century, things changed dramatically. "Better living through chemistry" has begun to sound dated (if not sinister). Genomics …

The Role Of Patents In Fostering Open Innovation, John Dubiansky

ExpressO

The patent system is at an inherent tension with contemporary practices of innovation. American patent doctrine reveres the lone inventor who, through the marshalling of extraordinary insight and experimental toil, conceives a novel invention. As a reward, the inventor is given the right to profit from his contribution through personal commercial exploitation. While this perspective may have reflected the practice of the mechanical arts at the time of the nation’s founding, it no longer reflects contemporary industrial research and development, where innovation is an increasingly networked process.

This disconnect is evidenced by the fact that contemporary patent doctrine has failed …

Intellectual Property: The Practical And Legal Fundamentals, Thomas G. Field Jr

Law Faculty Scholarship

Patents, copyrights, trademarks and related interests are known as intellectual property (IP). It has not been long since patents especially were regarded in U.S. courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, as tools of monopolists, and their owners often fared poorly. However, people have come increasingly to view privately funded innovation as critical to national economic well-being and to agree that such innovation cannot occur unless companies that succeed in the marketplace can recoup their research, development and marketing costs. That is a major function of IP, and, particularly within the past dozen years, IP has been seen, both here …

Accepting Exceptions?: A Comparative Approach To Experimental Use In U.S. And German Patent Law, Peter Ruess

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Experimental use is a keystone of research and innovation for some and obstacle in using a patent for others. In a genuine international field such as patent law, monitoring recent developments is best done in a comparative way. Particularly, the decision Merck v. Integra of the US Supreme Court and the new EU law, give reason to explore this field in more detail.

Calibrating Patent Lifetimes, Eric E. Johnson

Faculty Articles

The patent system could better achieve its primary mission of incentivizing technological innovation by moving away from the onesize-fits-all 20-year term for patents and moving to a system of varying durations for different categories of invention. The current patent duration is arbitrary, the result of entrenched historical accident. Allowing upward variance from the 20-year term in discrete categories of invention offers the prospect of boosting innovation in impoverished technological sectors. Allowing downward variance in other categories would benefit overall social welfare by removing needless technological monopolization and associated deadweight loss. Current economic models and available economic data do not allow …

Estimates Of Patent Rents From Firm Market Value, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

The value of patent rents is an important quantity for policy analysis. However, estimates in the literature based on patent renewals might be understated. Market value regressions could provide validation, but they have not had clear theoretical foundations for estimating patent rents. I develop a simple model to make upper bound estimates of patent rents using regressions on Tobin's Q. I test this on a sample of US firms and find it robust to a variety of considerations. My estimates correspond well with estimates based on patentee behavior outside the pharmaceutical industry, but renewal estimates might be understated for pharmaceuticals.

Patent Buy-Outs For Global Disease Innovations For Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

Drug prices are uniquely susceptible to radical price reductions through generic competition. Patented pharmaceuticals may be priced at more than 30 times the marginal cost of production; the excess is the patent rent collected by the drug company while the patent and exclusive marketing periods remain. Patent rents are significant. AIDS drugs which sell for US$10,000 per person per year in the US are sold generically for less than US$200. If patented drugs could be sold at the marginal cost of production, cost effective treatments would become even more attractive, and other interventions would become affordable.

This Article proposes marginal …

Panel I: Do Overly Broad Patents Lead To Restrictions On Innovation And Competition?, Matthew Bye, Mary Critharis, David Balto, Herbert Schwartz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Panel I: Do Overly Broad Patents Lead To Restrictions On Innovation And Competition?, Matthew Bye, Mary Critharis, David Balto, Herbert Schwartz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Supporting Innovation In Targeted Treatments: Licenses Of Right To Nih-Funded Research Tools, Tanuja V. Garde

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Support for new drug development has taken some interesting turns in current patent law jurisprudence. Beginning with the severe curtailment of scope of the common law experimental use doctrine in Madey v. Duke University, and culminating with the recent Supreme Court decision in Merck KGaA v. Integra Lifesciences I, Ltd., broadening the scope of the statutory research exemption, the freedom to conduct experimental research using another's patented inventions becomes dependent in part on the purpose of the research. That the patent at issue in Merck was characterized by the Federal Circuit as being directed to a research tool raised the …

The Vanishing Public Domain: Antibiotic Resistance, Pharmaceutical Innovation And Global Public Health, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride goes before a fall. The evolutionary pressure of antibiotic use selects for resistant strains with the least fitness cost. Effective drugs should be used. But when they are used, no matter how carefully, evolutionary pressure for resistance is created. The problem is not limited to antibiotics. Variants of the human immunodeficiency (AIDS) virus develop resistance to anti-retroviral …