Patent law offers a set of exclusive rights to innovators, awarding such rights for inventions that meet certain statutory criteria. The statutory requirements for invention incorporate purportedly objective criteria against which new technologies are measured for patent eligibility. For...

Legal governance and regulation is becoming increasingly reliant on data collection and algorithmic data processing. In the area of copyright, on-line protection of digitized works is frequently mediated by algorithmic enforcement systems intended to purge illicit content and limit the liability...

Economic theory has struggled to produce a coherent narrative justifying the implementation of intellectual property regimes, although a variety of rationales have been advanced as explanations. The most prevalent justification characterizes the subject matter of intellectual property in terms...

The theories of information ethics articulated by Luciano Floridi and his collaborators have clear implications for law. Information law, including the law of privacy and of intellectual property, is especially likely to benefit from a coherent and comprehensive theory of information ethics....

Machine learning systems, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly being deployed both for the creation of innovative works and the administration of intellectual property (IP) rights associated with those works. At the same time, evidence of racial bias in IP systems is manifest...

Humans have long used a variety of tools to convey artistic expression. Perhaps the most recent and mysterious artistic tools are machine learning or “artificially intelligent” (AI) computer systems that have captured popular attention. When taken in isolation, these devices seem to operate...

Patents are legal delinquents. A growing body of empirical evidence demonstrates that patents repeatedly fail to fulfill the responsibilities they have been assigned in fostering innovation. But I argue here that in their moments of misbehavior, we can catch a glimpse of the social roles patents...

Patent law is bogged down in the minutia of claims construction. Claim construction is central to every patent dispute, but it has not provided the hoped-for certainty or notice to competitors. Quite the contrary: disputes about the importance of inventions and the scope of patents have been...

An inescapable feature of regulation is the existence of loopholes: activities that formally comply with the text of regulation, but which in practice avoid the desired outcome of the regulation. Considerable ingenuity may be devoted to exploiting regulatory loopholes. Where technological...