Today, Senators Chris Coons, Tom Cotton, Dick Durbin, and Mazie Hirono introduced the Support Technology & Research for Our Nation’s Growth and Economic Resilience (STRONGER) Patents Act of 2017. This important piece of legislation will protect our innovation economy by restoring stable and effective property rights for inventors. Read more
Category: Patent Law
CPIP Co-Founder Testifies at House Judiciary Committee Hearing on IP
CPIP co-founder Adam Mossoff testified on June 13 before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet. He and other witnesses testified about the impact of the Supreme Courts recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Read more
An Ever-Weakening Patent System is Threatening the Future of American Innovation
Over the past ten years, the United States patent system has been transformed by new legislation, regulatory actions, and numerous decisions by the Supreme Court addressing nearly every area of patent doctrine. The many disruptive legal changes have affected infringement remedies, licensing activities, and what types of inventions and discoveries are eligible for patent protection, resulting in a profound sense of uncertainty for most stakeholders. Read more
CPIP Publishes Prof. John F. Witherspoon’s Tribute to the Late Judge Giles S. Rich
CPIP has published a tribute to Judge Giles S. Rich by Professor John F. Witherspoon. Prof. Witherspoon is Director Emeritus, Intellectual Property Program, Antonin Scalia Law School. Prof. Witherspoon’s career in government, academia, and private practice spans more than fifty years. Read more
Innovate4Health: Global Good’s “Arktek”: A Life-Saving Super-Thermos Vaccine Cooler
This post is one of a series in the #Innovate4Health policy research initiative.
More than 1.5 million children die every year from diseases that existing vaccines could prevent. Why aren’t these children vaccinated? One big reason is that vaccines need to be kept cool until they reach patients, but that’s a really hard task in parts of the world where power is unreliable. Read more
CPIP Scholars File Amicus Brief Urging Consideration of Claimed Inventions as a Whole
Last week, CPIP Senior Scholar Adam Mossoff and I filed an amicus brief on behalf of 15 law professors, including CPIP’s Devlin Hartline, Chris Holman, Sean O’Connor, Kristen Osenga, and Mark Schultz. We urge the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in TDE Petroleum v. Read more
New Paper Addresses Flaws in Patent Holdup Theory
Stephen Haber and Alexander Galetovic of the Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Prosperity (IP2) published a new working paper on the problems with Patent Holdup Theory. In “The Fallacies of Patent Holdup Theory,” Professors Haber and Galetovic show that Patent Holdup Theory is based on three fundamental errors. Read more
Federal Circuit Improperly Extends Abstract Idea Exception to Industrial Machines
An oil well drilling rig is not an abstract idea. A method of operating an oil well drilling rig is also not an abstract idea. This proposition should be clear to all, but in TDE Petroleum Data Solutions v AKM Enterprise, the Federal Circuit held that a method of operating an oil well drilling rig is directed to the abstract idea of “storing data, receiving data, and using mathematics or a computer to organize that data and generate additional information.” Read more
Supreme Court Should Not Reward Efficient Infringement in Apple v. Samsung
In Apple v. Samsung, the Supreme Court is presented with a classic issue of statutory interpretation in the case that has come to exemplify the Smart Phone Wars. In one of the many lawsuits brought by Apple against Samsung after Samsung rejected Apple’s offer to license its patents, a jury found Samsung liable for infringing Apple’s design patents on the iPhone. Read more
FTC’s PAE Study Makes Unsupported Recommendations
The FTC released its long-awaited study of so-called patent assertion entities, or PAEs, today. As many predicted, the FTC makes several broad recommendations for substantive and procedural reforms. The problem with this, however, is that the study was not designed to reveal the sort of data that could support such policy recommendations. Read more