Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Brief Of Former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul R. Michel And Scholars Of Law And Economics As Amici Curae In Support Of Respondents, In Hikma Pharmaceuticals Usa, Inc. V. Amarin Pharma, Inc., Jess Miers, Emily Michiko Morris, Mark F. Schultz, Kristina M.L. Acri, Bowman Heiden, Joshua Kresh, Honorable Paul Michel, Kristen Jakobsen Osenga, Douglas Park, Ted M. Sichelman

Akron Law Faculty Publications

• Innovation in Identification and Clinical Trials Testing of New Indications Yields Great Public Benefits but Requires the Incentive of Patent Protection.
• Section viii [skinny label statemetnts] was Never Intended to be a Safe Harbor for Infringement of Method of Use Patents.
• Allowing this Case to Proceed Past the Rule 12 Stage will not Deter Section viii Carve-Outs. 

Patent Law's Trade Remedy, Michael Doane

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Although a trade remedy, not an intellectual property rights statute, Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 plays an important and controversial role in the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the United States. As a trade remedy, Section 337 is designed and intended to promote innovation and investment in the United States through support of statutorily defined domestic industries against unfair competition from infringing imported products. This Article analyzes Section 337 as a trade remedy from the perspective of intellectual property rights owners and innovators such as start-up companies, universities, individual inventors, and other research and development-focused entities. …

Design Patent Infringement As Unfair Competition, Mark D. Janis

William & Mary Law Review

The rule for determining design patent infringement requires an assessment of substantial similarity through the eyes of an ordinary observer—similarity sufficient to induce the observer to purchase the infringing design supposing it to be the patented design. That test, which originates in the Supreme Court’s 1871 Gorham Manufacturing Co. v. White decision, is an anomaly. It is a patent infringement test framed in language that would be more at home in a trademark infringement or unfair competition case. Yet the Federal Circuit has insisted that design patent infringement is unlike trademark infringement or unfair competition, dismissing any kinship as superficial. …

The Timing Of Claim Construction: An Analysis Of Claim Construction Procedure And A Proposed Rule To Ensure Cost Effective And Timely Relief In Patent Infringement Cases, Timothy A. Richard

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The federal government issues patents to encourage inventors to produce new and useful works and advance the state of the art.[1] The patent process is simple: in exchange for the right to exclude all others from making and using an invention for an established period, the inventor provides the government — and ultimately the public — with a full disclosure of how to make and use the invention.[2] Despite this full disclosure, the terms used in patent claims are subject to judicial interpretation during litigation.[3] Both the Supreme Court of the United States (“Supreme Court”) and the …

Do Academic Researchers Care About Patent Infringement? A Pcr Case Study, Janet Freilich

Faculty Scholarship

Because much cutting-edge academic research involves building on other new technologies, university research often involves making or using a patented invention—an act of patent infringement. The problem of how patents affect academic researchers has attracted considerable attention, but legal scholars are divided on the magnitude of patents’ potential impact. Many scholars fear that patents will entirely hobble academic scientific research, while others find that academic researchers entirely ignore patents and thus that they have little impact. This Article adds a piece of empirical evidence to the debate by studying the example of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. In the early …

International Arbitration Of Sep Frand Royalties, Steven Pepe, Samuel Brenner, Michael Morales

Touro Law Review

Standard-essential patent royalty disputes have typically been litigated in U.S. federal district courts, but patent owners have recently started to file suit in courts across the globe, leading to issues of comity, anti-suit injunctions, and increased litigation costs. International arbitration provides a unique forum for parties to litigate these royalty disputes and avoid, or at least lessen the burden, of these issues. This Article explores the advantages and disadvantages of using international arbitration to resolve standard-essential patent royalty disputes.

Innovative Or Invalid: Amgen, Inc. V. Sanofi, Special Masters, & The Seventh Amendment Right To A Trial By Jury In Civil Proceedings, Nivory Gordon Iii

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

Measuring Follow-On Innovation, Janet Freilich, Sepehr Shahshahani

Faculty Scholarship

How patents affect follow-on innovation is a key question for the patent system. We disaggregate follow-on innovation into activities that infringe patents and others that do not infringe but can be indirectly affected by patents. Replicating an important study using our disaggregated measure, we find that 87 percent of follow-on scientific publications describing patented genes do not constitute patent infringement. Supplementing our empirical strategy with data on patent expiration dates, we find that gene patents which are not close to expiration cause an increase in noninfringing follow-on research, but the effect disappears for patents close to expiration. Our nuanced measure …

A Closer Look At The "Eye" Test: The British Influence On Early American Design Patent Infringement Law, Mark D. Janis

IP Theory

The Supreme Court has asserted that “[t]he Patent Clause in our Constitution ‘was written against the backdrop’ of the English system.” That notion has a long lineage. In 1818, the author of an anonymous “Note on the Patent Laws,” widely assumed to be Justice Story, claimed that “[t]he patent acts of the United States are, in a great degree, founded on the principles and usages which have grown out of the English statute on the same subject.”

But these generalizations significantly overstate—and oversimplify—the influence of British law on the nascent American jurisprudence of patents. Early American jurists felt no reluctance …

The Hidden Cost Of University Patents, Christopher J. Ryan Jr., W. Michael Schuster, Brian L. Frye

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Universities are encouraged to undertake research through grants from government agencies, foundations, and other organizations. The Bayh-Dole Act reinforces this incentive structure by allowing universities to take ownership of the resultant patents. The rights of ownership include the ability to generate income by licensing patents and bringing patent infringement lawsuits. Undoubtedly, exercising these rights to financially benefit the university is economically rational. But might such actions also impose a cost on the public despite the fact that these very patents arose from public research subsidies?

This study examines the relationship between a university’s research expenditures and its likelihood to litigate …

Discovering Ebay's Impact On Copyright Injunctions Through Empirical Evidence, Matthew Sag, Pamela Samuelson

Faculty Articles

This Article reports on new empirical evidence discrediting the widely held view that judges have resisted applying the Supreme Court’s teachings in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. about injunctive relief in copyright cases. That 2006 patent law decision ruled that courts should not automatically issue injunctions upon a finding of infringement; instead, plaintiffs must prove their entitlement to injunctive relief. eBay had a seismic impact on patent litigation and greatly reduced the threat that small infringements could be leveraged into billion-dollar settlements. Yet prior empirical work, at least one major copyright law treatise, and many articles assert that eBay had …

Hit The Road, Jack: The Auto Industry As The Next Vehicle For Predatory Infringement, Kristen Osenga

Law Faculty Publications

While patents, patent litigation, and patent pools have been part of the automotive industry since the late-1800s, the prevalence of technology covered by standards and accompanying standard essential patents (SEPs) is much more recent. Today’s smart cars and the widespread incorporation of telecommunication and Internet of Things standards in vehicles raise concerns about how well the automotive industry will be able to adapt to this new SEP-laden future. This article predicts that predatory infringement of SEPs for two related reasons. First, although some industries, such as telecommunications, have long dealt with SEPs, the incorporation of standardized technology is more recent …

Patent Prophylaxis: Expanding Access To Prep Through 28 U.S.C. § 1498, Jonathan A. Bell

William & Mary Law Review

Part I of this Note details the discovery of Truvada for PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] and the ongoing patent infringement litigation brought by HHS [United States Department of Health and Human Services], discusses the patents currently held by CDC and Gilead, and examines the shortcomings of infringement litigation as a means to expand access to the drug. Part II analyzes the mechanism of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act and discusses two previously attempted applications for the HIV-management drug ritonavir to demonstrate why march-in rights will always fail to expand access to life-saving medications or reduce costs to consumers. Part III …

The (Unnoticed) Revitalization Of The Doctrine Of Equivalents, Daryl Lim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Over the past century, few patent issues have been considered so often by the Supreme Court of the United States as the doctrine of equivalents (“DOE”). This judge-made rule deals with a question that lies at the heart of patent policy—what is the best way to define property rights in an invention? The doctrine gives patentees an opportunity to ensnare an accused device that does not literally infringe a patent claim if the accused device is substantially similar to each claim limitation. Patentees enjoy this advantage, but it comes at a cost to the public, who must face the …

Resorbing Patent Law's Kessler Cat Into The General Law Of Preclusion, Dennis D. Crouch, Homayoon Rafatijo

Faculty Publications

It has become exceedingly common in our legal system that courts, in the guise of respect for precedent, compound upon errors. Legal precedents are written documents, but "[t]he reality we can put into words is never reality itself." As such, we seldom find a court decision that embodies the entire legal reality regarding the questions presented. In this respect, the legal system inherently suffers from a lack of what mathematicians call completeness. Each decision gives rise to countless inferences because what lower courts observe by reading the precedent is not the entire legal reality but an incomplete reality exposed to …

The Truth About Design Patents, Sarah Burstein, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

American University Law Review

Design patents are hot. Scholars and policymakers are increasingly focusing on this once-niche area of law. However, many of the empirical studies in this area— including old ones that still get cited—were methodologically questionable from the start, have become outdated, or both. In this Article, we make two sets of contributions to this important and underdeveloped literature. First, we review the empirical studies of design patents thus far, including those that pre- and post-date the creation of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and we update the findings of those studies. Second, we consider a set of …

Reconstruction Of The Reasonable Person Standard Under Chinese Patent Law, Weihong Yao, Robert H. Hu

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

Treating Diagnostics: Protecting In Vitro Diagnostic Testing In An Uncertain § 101 Landscape, Emily Iroz Rich

Akron Law Review

Beyond question, medical diagnostic tests, they save lives. The diagnostic tests also contribute to the overall health of the U.S. economy. However, the current state of subject-matter eligibility for patent protection does not incentivize the research and development of these life-saving tools. Previous legislative and judicial efforts to fix subject-matter eligibility have failed. This article proposes a diagnostic patent act to allow the protection of in vitro diagnostic tests. The proposed diagnostic patent act would include safeguards to allow adequate access to fundamental research while incentivizing the return of investment to the patent holder. Safeguards would include exceptions to patent …

‘Substantial Portion’ Of A Patent: Quantitative Or Qualitative?, Matthew Rollin

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This Article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Life Technologies Corp., where the Court issued another requirement for patent infringement. Part II of this Article examines the text of the Patent Act and the history behind it. Part III further discusses the facts of Life Technologies Corp., to give more relevant background facts and history. Part IV focuses on the prior opinions of the case, including the district court’s ruling, appellate court’s decision, and the Supreme Court’s decision. Part V examines and concludes with the legal significance of Life Technologies Corp., the impact that it will have on future …

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Michigan Technology Law Review

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …

Patents For Sharing, Toshiko Takenaka

Michigan Technology Law Review

Spurred by the Internet, emerging technologies have changed the way commercial firms innovate and have made it possible for individuals to play an important role in that innovation. Producers in the Information Communication Technologies (ICT), and other sectors dealing with complex technologies with many separately patentable components, find it increasingly difficult to make products without infringing on patents held by others. Numerous overlapping patents often cover such products. Producers have developed a new way to use patents: as inclusive rights for sharing their technologies with others through cross-licensing and other private ordering arrangements in order to ensure the freedom to …

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Cornell Law Review

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, like enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods LLC illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically …

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.

Determining Enhanced Damages After Halo Electronics: Still A Struggle?, Veronica Corcoran

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

35 U.S.C. § 284 of the Patent Act allows district courts to use their discretion to award enhanced damages up to three times the amount found or assessed in the case of patent infringement. This Comment will consider how the Supreme court of the United States’ holding in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse electronics, Inc. changed the landscape of enhanced damages awards in light of willful infringement.

First, this Comment will examine the Federal Circuit’s approach that now embraces both an objective and subjective inquiry in determining enhanced damages, which may resolve the concern over the rigidity in the Seagate …

Patent Infringement As Trespass, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

The now-conventional account of patent law holds that infringement is a strict liability offense, meaning that intent is not an element of an infringement claim. This account heightens the apparent injustice of patent law's special knowledge problem, that as ambiguous descriptions of intangible resources, patent claims do not sufficiently make potential infringers aware of a patentee's right to exclude. Particularly in the age of so-called "patent thickets, " clusters of patents of variable merit which are indistinguishable from each other and from prior art, strict liability, or infringement seems rather hard.

These problems reflect a conceptual misunderstanding. When infringement is …

Solving The Riddle! Bridging The Gap In The Federal Circuit’S Definition Of “Regular And Established Place Of Business” To Prevent Patent Trolls From Forum Shopping, Michael A. Morales

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Faculty Scholarship

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, such as enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically measure …

At&T V. Microsoft: Is This A Case Of Deepsouth Déjà Vu?, Christopher R. Rogers

Maine Law Review

It has been stated many times by various courts that the patent laws of the United States do not reach beyond the borders of the United States. In an age of expanding world commerce, the territorial reach of our patent laws has sometimes made it difficult for U.S. inventors to meaningfully protect their intellectual property. For example, the Supreme Court holding in Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp. opened up a loophole that allowed unlicensed U.S. manufacturers to essentially export patented inventions, thereby trampling on the patent rights of U.S. patent holders selling to foreign markets. The Deepsouth loophole has …

Adoption Of The Bayh-Dolye Act In Developed Countries: Added Presure For A Broad Research Exemption In The United States?, Michael S. Mireles

Maine Law Review

Numerous developed countries, most if not all members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Finland, have or are considering adopting legislation similar to the Bayh-Dole Act. These countries apparently believe that passage of legislation similar to the Bayh-Dole Act will lead to the transfer of government funded research results from the university laboratory to the marketplace and other economic activity. In the United States, the birthplace of the Bayh-Dole Act (the Act), it is not entirely clear whether its passage is the direct result …