Volume 87 June 2009 Issue 5

Frontiers in Empirical Patent Law Scholarship

1321

Andrew Chin

Recent proposals to amend the Patent Act  and the legal academy’s growing interest in empirical methods  have made the policy analysis of patent law a timely topic for colloquia  and symposia.   Empirical scholarship plays a vital role in these discussions, as it tests the theories, hypotheses, and characterizations that underlie legal rules and... more

Keynote Address

1323

Hon. S. Jay Plager

In thinking about the range of issues we confront in empirical legal research, including research into patent law and policy, it is well to begin with fundamentals.  There are three inquiries that define what scholarship into the human condition cares about—knowledge, conduct, and governance.  Typically, scholarship regarding patent law and policy is concerned with... more

The Political Economy of the Patent System

1341

Jay P. Kesan & Andres A. Gallo

In recent years, many reform proposals have been presented in Congress for changing the patent system in the United States.  Most of these proposals have been normative in nature and based on overcoming the many perceived shortcomings of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (“Patent Office”) performance.  Nonetheless, actual legislative reforms have failed... more

Copying in Patent Law

1421

Christopher A. Cotropia & Mark A. Lemley

Patent law is virtually alone in intellectual property (IP) in punishing independent development.  To infringe a copyright or trade secret, defendants must copy the protected IP from the plaintiff, directly or indirectly.  But patent infringement requires only that the defendant’s product falls within the scope of the patent claims.  Not only doesn’t the defendant... more

Patents and Growth: Empirical Evidence From the States

1467

Glynn S. Lunney, Jr.

In the Uruguay Round, negotiators for the United States persuaded its trading partners to incorporate uniform minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property rights (“IPRs”) directly into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.  Although individual countries may adopt higher standards for protection, the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights... more

University Software Ownership and Litigation: A First Examination

1519

Arti K. Rai, John R. Allison & Bhaven N. Sampat

Software patents and university-owned patents represent two of the most controversial intellectual property developments of the last twenty-five years.  Despite this reality, and concerns that universities act as “patent trolls” when they assert software patents in litigation against successful commercializers, no scholar has systematically examined the ownership and litigation of university software patents.  In... more

Of Trolls, Davids, Goliaths, and Kings: Narratives and Evidence in the Litigation of High-Tech Patents

1571

Colleen V. Chien

While each patent dispute is unique, most fit the profile of one of a limited number of patent litigation stories.  A dispute between an independent inventor and a large company, for instance, is often cast in “David v. Goliath” terms.  When two large companies fight over patents, in contrast, they are said to be... more

Search for Tomorrow: Some Side Effects of Patent Office Automation

1617

Andrew Chin

The United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (“Patent Office”) move to a paperless search facility and the public’s growing involvement in prior art search have recently elevated the role of search engine technology in the patent examination process.  This Article reports on an empirical study that examines how this technology has systematically changed not... more

Patent Citation Networks Revisited: Signs of a Twenty-First Century Change

1657

Katherine J. Strandburg, Gábor Csárdi, Jan Tobochnik & Péter Érdi & László Zalányi

This Article reports an empirical study of the network composed of patent “nodes” and citation “links” between them.  It builds on an earlier study in which we argued that trends in the growth of the patent citation network provide evidence that the explosive growth in patenting in the late twentieth-century was due at least... more