Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Clarifying The Doctrine Of Inequitable Conduct, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

Addressing squarely the issue of the multiple standards of materiality in inequitable conduct litigation, Therasense v. Becton Dickinson raises many difficult issues that could be clarified through the lens of the analogous concept of fraud on the Trademark Office. The standards for finding fraud on the Trademark Office lack the ambiguity found in the doctrine of inequitable conduct, despite the parallel penalties of unenforceability and requirements of proof of materiality and intent. Informed by the many decisions of Judge Michel, this essay concludes that the standards for finding fraud before the Trademark Office, as set forth in In re Bose, …

Branded Versus Generic Competition - A Kind Word For The Branded Drugs, Richard A. Epstein

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Much of the extensive commentary on the six month coexclusivity period allowed by the Hatch-Waxman Act focuses excessively on attempts by pioneer drug companies to extend their joint monopoly power by making complex deals with the first new entrant. In this article, I broaden the analytical framework to address a more serious problem that the conventional analysis overlooks: the decreased rate of innovation in the medical field that is attributable in large part to shorter patent exclusivity periods resulting from heightened requirements for FDA approval. As the low-hanging fruit disappears, the rate of new drug discovery drops just as the …

Analyzing The Non-Competition Covenant As A Category Of Intellectual Property Regulation, Charles Tait Graves

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Non-competition covenants operate as a type of intellectual property regulation-somewhat akin to trade secret law-but are rarely analyzed as such. Some commentators believe non-compete covenants are a problem for regional economic development. Others promote their enforceability on a theory that restrictive covenants reflect the employer's provision of employee training appropriately allow litigants to avoid having to prove a trade secret case against a departing employee. This article disagrees with the latter group and offers an intellectual property-based analysis of non-competition covenants. At the heart of this essay is a fifteen-point synopsis of how non-competition covenants function with respect to innovation …

Subverting New Media For Profit: How Online Social Media Black Markets Violate Section 5 Of The Federal Trade Commission Act, Peter Touschner

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Social media can be broadly defined as a category of sites centered on user participation and user-generated content. Prominent social media sites include Facebook, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, and Twitter. In the U.S., interaction on such sites accounts for nearly a quarter of all time spent on the Internet, topping email and games as the most popular online activity. Given the rise of social media and its increasing influence over consumer market choices, a few firms have sought to game social media systems by setting up "black markets" for social media votes and actions. These firms act as middlemen, charging …

Licensee Patent Validity Challenges Following Medimmune: Implications For Patent Licensing, Alfred C. Server, Peter Singleton

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The recent Supreme Court decision in MedImmune v. Genentech, resolved a jurisdictional question while refusing to address questions regarding application of the common law doctrine of licensee estoppel. This doctrine prevents a licensee enjoying the benefits of a license agreement from challenging the validity of the underlying patent. Although the Supreme Court in Lear v. Adkins rejected application of the doctrine where the licensee had ceased making payments under the agreement, it left open the same question which the MedImmune Court mentioned, but refused to address. Namely: Whether the doctrine still applies to a non-repudiating licensee in good standing. In …

Information Anxieties, G. S. Hans

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The constant access and instant publication that the Internet allows have given every pundit an online soapbox. This content explosion has created two related problems for consumers and industry: how to find valuable content online (whatever "valuable" means) and how to moderate the flow of the content itself. Tim Wu argues in The Master Switch that the second issue of content control and mediation has been fiercely debated in the United States as far back as the invention of the telephone in the late nineteenth century. Consumers, creators, companies, and government officials have disputed the appropriate regulations for the devices …

Creating A Plug-In Electric Vehicle Industry Cluster In Michigan: Prospects And Policy Options, Thomas P. Lyon, Russell A. Baruffi Jr.

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article seeks to examine how policy can be used strategically to foster the development of a plug-in electric vehicle ("PEV") industry cluster in Michigan. The tendency for certain industries to localize in particular regions has captured the interest of much economic research and policy discussion in recent years. The trend toward the clustering of new industries has stayed strong despite the acceleration of globalization. Attention to clusters has proven to be an enduring theme in economic development circles for nearly thirty years. Clusters generate synergies that make industrial activity greater than the sum of contributions by individual players. In …

The Case For Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing: Ten Steps Business And Industry Must Take To Optimize Opportunities In The Emerging Clean Energy Economy, Stanley Pruss

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Clean energy policy choices will be critical both for economic vitality within the United States and for international competitiveness in the race to improve clean energy technology and capture emerging markets. With legislative solutions losing momentum, business and industry leaders will be the key drivers in reorienting American policy, discourse, and economics in the clean energy economy. The problem, however, is that many political and business leaders are unaware of the job-creating potential and economic benefits in the clean energy sectors. These benefits could be realized if we made a serious, strategic effort to align our latent strengths in manufacturing …

Locked-In To Their Decisions: Investigating How The States Govern Revocation Of Advance Directives And How Three States Make Revocation Impossible For People With Locked-In Syndrome, Peter C. Harman

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Since the late 1970s, most states have enacted laws that allow people to set out their health care preferences in advance directives. Advance directive statutes give people the opportunity to make important health care choices in advance, while they still have the mental acuity to make well-informed decisions. These statutes also allow the declarant to change his or her mind in the future, either by revoking the advance directive or by modifying his or her previously expressed preferences.

However, there is one class of people who still have full mental faculties, but have lost the opportunity to change their minds …

The Geosynchronous Orbit And The Outer Limits Of Westphalian Sovereignty, Nima Nayebi

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 provides that outer space is the province of all humankind and is to be used for the benefit of all countries. Nonetheless, the allocation of highly desirable "real estate" in the geosynchronous orbit ("GSO") around the Earth's equator is a point of international controversy. Developing equatorial countries have asserted sovereignty over the orbital space "above" their territorial borders with the hope of extracting rent from developed countries that launch satellites into the GSO. So far, the international community has rejected this notion, but the legal status of the GSO remains in limbo. This Note …

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2012), Case Western Reserve Journal Of Law, Technology And The Internet

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

To Disclose Or Not To Disclose: Why The United States Property Adopted The European Model For Third-Party Participation During Patent Prosecution, Dylan M. Aste

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Are Technical Difficulties At The Supreme Court Causing A "Disregard Of Duty"?, Mark Grabowski

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Shouting Fire In A Burning Theater: Distinguishing Fourth Estate From Fifth Column In The Age Of Wikileaks, Geoffrey Schotter

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Youth And Organizing: Why Unions Will Struggle To Organize The Millennials, D. Martin Stanberry

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Protect America By Being Unique: How Changes In Biometric Data Collection Procedures Can Improve Us-Visit, Mark Skerry

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Limits On Hard-To-Reproduce Inventions: Process Elements And Biotechnology's Compliance With The Enablement Requirement, Dmitry Karshtedt

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

In the recently decided case of Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc., the Federal Circuit resolved a long-standing split of authority between its panels by holding that a claim to a product that includes process elements (a "product-byprocess" claim) is infringed only if the product is made using that process. This article advances the proposal that product-by-process claims can help patentees meet the enablement requirement of the Patent Act, while still offering a reasonably broad scope of protection. For claims to new materials whose behavior and utility can be highly process-dependent and whose structure cannot be fully ascertained by analytical methods …

Eyes On A Climate Prize: Rewarding Energy Innovation To Achieve Climate Stabilization, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at double their pre-industrial levels (or lower) will require emission reductions far in excess of what can be achieved with current or projected levels of technology at a politically acceptable cost. Substantial technological innovation is required if the nations of the world are to come anywhere close to proposed emission reduction targets. Neither traditional federal support for research and development of new technologies nor traditional command-and-control regulations are likely to spur sufficient innovation. Technology inducement prizes, on the other hand, have the potential to incentivize and accelerate the rate of technological innovation in the …

Reconceiving The Patent Rocket Docket: An Empirical Study Of Infringement Litigation 1985–2010, 11 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 58 (2011), Saurabh Vishnubhakat

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

This Article presents the first survival model for systematically identifying and comparing United States district courts as patent rocket dockets, and for examining related trends in patent litigation. The conventional wisdom of rocket docket status in a judicial district tends to rely on average case disposition times and the availability of court rules for patent cases, as well as anecdotal information about well-known jurists with experience in patent adjudication. By comparison, this Article approaches rocket dockets through a quantitative investigation of recent historical trends in patent case filings as well as through market concentration analysis at the district court and …

Fifteen Years Of Fame: The Declining Relevance Of Domain Names In The Enduring Conflict Between Trademark And Free Speech Rights, 11 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2011), Jude A. Thomas

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Domain name disputes have been the subject of substantial litigation, legislative action, and scholarly debate over the course of the past fifteen years. Much of the debate is the product of disagreement concerning whether trademark rights naturally extend into the domain name space and to what extent those rights are limited by principles of free speech. Gripe sites are paradigmatic examples of this debate. Society’s investment in defining these rights continues to grow, even as the relevance of domain names may be declining, due to: (1) changes in the way users locate content on the Internet; (2) the growth of …