By Kevin Madigan & Sean O’Connor
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee was to mark up a bill limiting patent eligibility for combination drug patents—new forms, uses, and administrations of FDA approved medicines. While the impetus was to curb so-called “evergreening” of drug patents, the effect would have been to stifle life-saving therapeutic innovations. Read more
On December 21, 2018, CPIP Senior Scholars Adam Mossoff and Kristen Osenga joined former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader and SIU Law’s Mark Schultz in comments submitted to the FTC as part of its ongoing Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century Hearings. Read more
On December 21, 2018, CPIP Director of International Innovation Policy Sean O’Connor filed comments before the FTC as part of its hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century. In October of 2018, Prof. O’Connor participated in the hearings on the Competition Policy and Copyright Law panel, and he submitted these comments to further expand upon the issues he discussed there. Read more
By David Lund & Matthew Barblan
American businesses are suffering as foreign governments improperly use their antitrust laws to discriminate against American companies. Recently, the United States Chamber of Commerce assembled an International Competition Policy Expert Group to examine this problem. Read more
Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York issued an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) interpretation of a consent decree governing the way the performance rights organization Broadcast Music Inc. Read more
This past April, we joined other IP scholars in explaining how the FCC’s proposed set-top box rules would undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners. In reply comments filed last month, the EFF and a group of IP academics argued that the proposed rules would not implicate any copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Read more
By Matthew Barblan & Kevin Madigan
Earlier this year, the FCC proposed a new regulatory scheme ostensibly designed to improve the market for pay-TV set-top boxes. Chairman Wheeler claimed that the proposed rules would “tear down the barriers that currently prevent innovators from developing new ways for consumers to access and enjoy their favorite shows and movies on their terms.” Read more
Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.
Last week, American visual communications and stock photography agency Getty Images filed a formal complaint in support of the European Union’s investigation into Google’s anti-competitive business practices. The Getty complaint accuses Google of using its image search function to appropriate or “scrape” third-party copyrighted works, thereby drawing users away from the original source of the creative works and preserving its search engine dominance. Read more
The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. Read more
We’ve all heard the narrative about patent licensing firms, often referred to pejoratively as “patent trolls.” These patent owners, who choose to license their innovations rather than build them, are the supposed poster-children of a “broken” patent system. It’s as if commercializing one’s property, just like a landlord leases his land for another to use, is suddenly a bad thing. Read more
