Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Alternative Software Protection In View Of In Re Bilski, Lauren Katzenellenbogen, Charles Duan, James Skelley

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Scary Patents, Stephen Mcjohn

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Nobody Reads Your Privacy Policy Or Online Contract? Lessons Learned And Questions Raised By The Ftc's Action Against Sears, Susan E. Gindin

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Innovation And Liability For Contributory Copyright Infringement, David Mcgowan

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Effect: Tougher Standards But Courts Return To The Prior Practice Of Granting Injunctions For Patent Infringement, Stacy Streur

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The Well-Pleaded Complaint Rule And Jurisdiction Over Patent Law Counterclaims: An Empirical Assessment Of Holmes Group And Proposals For Improvement, Jiwen Chen

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Egyptian Goddess V. Swisa: What Is The 'Point'?, A.C. Dike

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

A Discussion On The Patentability Of Signals: Examining In Re Nuijten, Damien Howard

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Role Of Clinical Trial Data In International Intellectual Property Law: The Case For A Public Goods Approach, Jerome H. Reichman

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Clinical trials are currently used to test drugs; however, the risk and cost of clinical trials are increasing so drastically that the clinical trials may become unsustainable. This article evaluates the legal and economic trends of intellectual property protection for pharmaceutical clinical trial data. The protection of clinical trials has become an alternative to patents as market exclusivity encourages the development and testing of unpatentable pharmaceuticals. This author argues that clinical trials should be treated as a national and international public good instead of a private good and proposes that the government should oversee and fund the clinical trials to …

The Observer And The Observed: Re-Imagining Privacy Dichotomies In Information Privacy Law, Marcy Peek

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

The New Invention Creation Activity Boundary In Patent Law, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

This Essay identifies a new boundary in patent law - illegal or immoral invention creation activity - and explores the possible chal­lenges and opportunities it may facilitate. The boundary currently is neither robust nor extensive, and whether and under what cir­cumstances it should exist at all is open to debate.

Self-Realizing Inventions And The Utilitarian Foundation Of Patent Law, Alan J. Devlin, Neel U. Sukhatme

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Unlike other forms of intellectual property, patents are universally justified on utilitarian grounds alone. Valuable inventions and discoveries, bearing the characteristics of public goods, are easily appropriated by third parties. Because much technological innovation occurs pursuant to significant expenditures—both in terms of upfront research and subsequent commercialization costs—inventors must be permitted to extract at least part of the social gain associated with their technological contributions. Absent some form of proprietary control or alternative reward system, economics predicts that suboptimal capital will be devoted to the innovative process.

This widely accepted principle comes with an important corollary: namely, that canons of …

The Individual Inventor Motif In The Age Of The Patent Troll, Christopher A, Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

The individual inventor motif has been part of American patent law since its inception. The question is whether the recent patent troll hunt has damaged the individual inventor's image and, in turn, caused Congress, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and the courts to become less concerned with patent law's impact on the small inventor. This Article explores whether there has been a change in attitude by looking at various sources from legislative, administrative, and judicial actors in the patent system, such as congressional statements and testimony in discussions of the recent proposed patent reform legislation, the USPTO …

Cops, Robbers, And Search Engines: The Questionable Role Of Criminal Law In Contributory Infringement Doctrine, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Online technologies have created a new litigation locus for intellectual property rights holders, one that targets intermediaries, not direct infringers. This unprecedented litigation strategy has put sudden pressure on the courts to evaluate the liability of indirect infringers. Without a developed body of precedent at their disposal, judges have resorted to analogies from the criminal law of accomplice liability to set the boundaries of contributory infringement. Does it make sense for intellectual property regulation to depend on the same principles that animate criminal law? This Article maintains that it would be a mistake to remake contributory infringement law in criminal …

The Folly Of Early Filing In Patent Law, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

This Article questions the conventional wisdom that the patent system should continue to encourage "early filing" of patent applications-filing at the beginning stages of technological development. The current thinking regarding early filing fails to account for the lack of technical and market information available about the invention at the early stages of development. A "file early, file often" mentality is instilled in inventors, exacerbating such systemic patent problems as too many patent applications, too many patents, underdevelopment of patented technology, increased assertion of patent rights, and fuzzy patent boundaries, to name a few. The Article suggests that in response patent …

An Economic Justification For Open Access To Essential Medicine Patents In Developing Countries, Sean Flynn, Aidan Hollis, Mike Palmedo

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper offers an economic rationale for compulsory licensing of needed medicines in developing countries. The patent system is based on a trade-off between the “deadweight losses” caused by market power and the incentive to innovate created by increased profits from monopoly pricing during the period of the patent. However, markets for essential medicines under patent in developing countries with high income inequality are characterized by highly convex demand curves, producing large deadweight losses relative to potential profits when monopoly firms exercise profit-maximizing pricing strategies. As a result, these markets are systematically ill-suited to exclusive marketing rights, a problem which …

Pitfalls In Patenting Publicly Funded Research - Comments On Draft South African Regulations, Matthew Herder, Cynthia M. Ho

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

South Africa recently enacted legislation similar to the US. Bayh-Dole Act, which permits publicly funded institutions to obtain patent rights in hopes that the patent incentive will foster commercialization, as well as generate revenues to the funded institutions and scientists. While enacting analogs to Bayh-Dole seems presently in vogue, there are definitely concerned about the original legislation that have been voiced. When South Africa recently published proposed guidelines implementing its version of Bayh-Dole, it broadly opened up the opportunity for public comments. The attached paper discusses some of concerns, including problems with delaying timely knowledge dissemination and the need to …

Efficient Definition And Communication Of Patent Rights: The Importance Of Ex Post Delineation, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

As with any area of law, rights and duties relating to patents should be clearly communicated in an efficient manner. Unfortunately, uncertainty concerning the scope of the rights granted by patents frequently results in expensive litigation. Most proposals for reducing this uncertainty do not examine its root causes and focus only on measures to provide additional clarification in patent applications. Such ex ante proposals are often inefficient because considerable uncertainty is inherent, given the limits of language and of our ability to foresee future developments. In addition, ex ante clarification often would be wasteful because so few patents are valuable …

The Unreasonableness Of The Patent Office's 'Broadest Reasonable Interpretation' Standard, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

This article does what is long overdue: it fully explores the validity of the BRI standard. The previously articulated rationales behind the BRI standard are severely lacking. Not only does the BRI standard fail to provide the advantages touted by the courts that created the standard, the standard is contrary to both the patent statutes and the concept of a unitary patent system. It allows examiners to avoid difficult claim interpretation issues; it leads to improper and uncorrectable denials of patent protection; and it is incurably ambiguous. Given that the BRI standard is severely lacking, the courts and the USPTO …

Of Patents And Property, James Bessen, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general property rights institutions have a substantial direct effect on economic growth. Conversely, with a few important exceptions like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, empirical evidence indicates that intellectual property rights have at best only a weak and indirect effect on economic growth. Further, it appears that for public firms in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation for fear of winding up on …

Hiding Behind Reciprocity: The Temporary Presence Exception And Patent Infringement Avoidance, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The temporary presence exception provides vessels engaged in international transport with a defense to patent infringement when traveling outside of the vessel’s home nation. The exception was adopted internationally and added to the Paris Convention in an effort to (1) minimize the costs associated with transporting between various countries with distinct national patent systems and (2) eliminate international tensions arising from charges of patent infringement when in foreign lands. Although the modern enactments of the temporary presence exception further these goals, this article argues that the exception is overbroad. Specifically, this article argues that the exception’s reciprocity requirement, in concert …

Jurisdictional Issues In The Adjudication Of Patent Law Malpractice Cases In Light Of Recent Federal Circuit Decisions, Michael Ena

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Heightened Enablement In The Unpredictable Arts, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A bedrock principle of patent law is that an applicant must sufficiently disclose the invention in exchange for the right to exclude. The essential facet of the disclosure requirement is enablement, which compels a patent applicant to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) how to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without undue experimentation. Enablement problems may arise when the applicant claims an invention broadly with a dearth of supporting data or examples. This is problematic in unpredictable fields like chemistry because a PHOSITA often needs a specific and detailed teaching in …

The Experimental Use Exception And Undergraduate Engineering Projects, Henry L. Welch

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

The experimental use exception was originally conceived as a defense applicable when the infringing activities were philosophical. Over time the exception has evolved into a test of the profit motives of the infringer. Despite their status as non-profits, universities now find themselves under the same narrow interpretation of the experimental use exception as previously applied only to profit-seeking businesses. This article explains that the experimental use exception is still a viable defense to patent infringement for a student-sponsored capstone senior design project. In a student-sponsored capstone senior design project, the impetus and general direction of the project are provided almost …

Intellectual Property Rights And Global Warming, Estaelle Derclaye

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Global warming is an issue that is everywhere in today's society. This article examines whether intellectual property rights could be the solution to the global warming problem. The article limits its discussion to patent and copyright law and explores solutions to global warming that are applicable in Europe. The author suggests that these recommendations could influence other countries to make their intellectual property rights greener, as intellectual property rights are based on international instruments and universal agreements that could apply in any country. The article examines how current copyright and patent laws already tackle global warming and explains how these …

Phillips V. Awh, Corp., A Doctrine Of Equivalents Case?, Natalie Sturicz

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

For a number of years, U.S. courts have noted that the doctrine of equivalents has been unworkable. This article explains that as American courts move toward a more holistic approach to claim interpretation, the doctrine of equivalents will become increasingly unnecessary as a means of expanding patent scope. The author asserts that adopting a "person having ordinary skill in the art" approach to claim interpretation and eliminating the doctrine of equivalents in patent infringement cases would benefit patent law in several ways: (1) when courts interpret patent claims from the perspective of a person reasonably skilled in the art, patentees …

Kewanee Revisited: Returning To First Principles Of Intellectual Property Law To Determine The Issue Of Federal Preemption, Sharon K. Sandeen

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In the early 1970s it was thought that states could regulate in the areas of trade secrets without interfering with federal patent policies. However, this concept was called into question in the Sixth Circuit's ruling in Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron. In 1974 the Supreme Court ruled that Ohio's trade secret law was not preempted by federal patent law. This article revisits the issues raised in Kewanee in light of the Supreme Court's current preemption jurisprudence, changes in patent law, copyright law, and trade secret law since that time. First, the article reviews the history and context of the Kewanee …

Panel I: The Business Method Patent And The Patent Reform Act Of 2007: Can The Law Keep Pace With Technology?, John Richards, Jeanne Fromer, Walter Hanchuk, Scott D. Locke

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Business Method Patents: The Challenge Of Coping With An Ever Changing Standard Of Patentability, Scott D. Locke, William D. Schmidt

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Does The Supreme Court Still Matter?, Timothy B. Dyk

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.