The Fifth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to silence, blocking the court from drawing adverse inferences from the defendant's silence. This article investigates the conditions under which extending such protection to civil defendants might increase (or decrease) social...

We build a model of innovation and patent adjudication under two forms of uncertainty; uncertainty regarding whether the original invention merits protection (non-obviousness), and uncertainty as to whether a particular competitor's product should be barred (infringement). We find that when it...