[Cross Posted to Truth on the Market]
In its recent decision in Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir., May 21, 2013), the Federal Circuit was forced to reverse a district court’s abuse of its discretion because the trial judge injected an anti-patent bias into the legal test for determining whether a patent-owner should receive a permanent injunction against an infringer. Read more
[Cross posted at Truth on the Market]
In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong. As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are not only consistent with historical patent litigation rates in the nineteenth century, there is actually less litigation today than during some decades in the early nineteenth century. Read more
Those claiming that we’ve seen an “explosion of patent litigation” in recent years have proven resilient to counterarguments, continuing even to generate questionable “statistics” to buttress their assertions.
Given the Obama Administration’s recent reversal of the International Trade Commission’s exclusion order against Apple in its patent dispute with Samsung, we are hearing once again that there has been an “explosion” of patents cases at the ITC. Read more
The Dangerous Adventurism of the United States Trade Representative:
Lifting the Ban against Apple Products Unnecessarily Opens a Can of Worms in Patent Law
In ordinary times, the business of the International Trade Commission does not appear as the lead story in the Wall Street Journal, predicting massive changes in the high-stakes patent battles. Read more
The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Douglas Dynamics, LLC, v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013) is very important given the widespread, albeit mistaken, belief today that the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange (2005) established that damages and not injunctions are the presumptive remedy for patent infringement. Read more
On June 9-11, the IP Business Congress sponsored by Intellectual Asset Magazine (IAM) hosted a debate on the resolution: “This house believes that the America Invents Act should be a legislative line in the sand and that no more reform of the US patent system is needed.” Read more
I am an avid reader of books about scientists, inventors and innovators. I’ve been particularly happy about the evolution of the narrative nonfiction genre that has occurred since the publication in 1995 of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel’s award-winning book on John Harrison’s invention of the first truly mechanical clock. Read more
By Professor Christopher Holman
[The following is a blog posting by Christopher Holman, a patent law scholar at UMKC School of Law, that he originally posted on April 5, 2013 at his blog, Holman’s Biotech IP Blog, where Professor Holman regularly blogs on important issues in biotech and IP law. Read more
[Cross posted at Truth on the Market]
Today’s public policy debates frame copyright policy solely in terms of a “trade off” between the benefits of incentivizing new works and the social deadweight losses imposed by the access restrictions imposed by these (temporary) “monopolies.” Read more
Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, U.S. Supreme Court, decided March 19, 2013
Chris Newman
Assistant Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
This is best described as a decision in which the Court felt compelled to choose between two readings of the Copyright Act, either of which led to unpalatable results. Read more
