Intellectual property -- right, wrong, or indifferent -- is well on its way to becoming irrelevant in the computer world. The reason is that the debate over the appropriate scope of intellectual property protection for computer software largely ignores the role of contract law in setting rights....

Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs) typically require their members to license any standard-essential patent on Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Unfortunately, numerous high-stakes disputes have recently broken out over just what these “FRAND commitments” mean and...

A commonly offered justification for patent trolls or non-practicing entities (NPEs) is that they serve as a middleman, facilitating innovation and bringing new technology from inventors to those who can implement it. We survey those involved in patent licensing to see how often patent license...

Courts, commentators, and companies have devoted enormous time and energy to the problem of standard-essential patents (SEPs) – patents that cover (or at least are claimed to cover) industry standards. With billions of dollars at stake, there has been a great deal of litigation and even more...

This Comment evaluates the economic effects of the patent misuse doctrine. The patent misuse doctrine is an equitable remedy analogous to the “unclean hands” doctrine in tort law. It bars infringement suits by patentees who have “misused” their patent grant, either by using the patent to...

The Supreme Court upended the patent world in the past decade with a series of decisions restricting the scope of patent-eligible subject matter. The culmination of those cases – Alice v. CLS Bank -- has been at the center of a firestorm of controversy in the five years since it was decided....

The Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have repeatedly emphasized the public interest in testing the validity of patents, weeding out patents that should not have been issued. But there is one important group of people the law systematically prevents from challenging bad patents. Curiously,...