Corporate officer liability doctrines under both the Patent Act and the Copyright Act diverge markedly from traditional corporate, agency, and tort law doctrines. This manuscript explores why the case law in federal patent and copyright cases differs so markedly not only from traditional legal...

PAEs have been much in the news because of certain practices that imply their demand for royalties is nothing more than extortion based upon the nuisance value of a lawsuit the PAE might bring, or explicitly threatens to bring, if no agreement is reached with the party practicing the patent. The...

This Article demonstrates that all intellectual property defenses fit into three conceptual categories: general, individualized, and class defenses. A general defense challenges the validity of the plaintiff’s intellectual property right. When raised successfully, it annuls the plaintiff’s...

The global litigation of standard essential patents (SEP) is taking a new turn with the jurisdictional battle between national courts. Some courts have started issuing anti-suit injunctions (ASI) to prohibit parallel litigation and consolidate the dispute at a single venue, while others have...

Studying ~200,000 evictions filed against ~300,000 Philadelphians from 2005 through 2021, we focus on the role of transit to court in preventing tenants from asserting their rights. Over the time period, nearly 40% of all tenants were forced to leave their residences because they didn't show up...

The role of individual inventors, small firms and entrepreneurs in the patent courts has become controversial for two, somewhat contradictory reasons. First, there is the view that small parties may be at a serious disadvantage in the courts since they do not have the financial resources to...

We investigate how firms adapt to trademark protection, an extensively used but underexamined form of IP protection, by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923 - an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China. By exploiting a unique, newly...

Non-practicing entities (NPEs), a.k.a. patent "trolls", have been disparaged as wasteful rent-seekers who assert patents that are credible as litigation weapons but weak in innovative value. Others, however, view NPEs as beneficial middlemen between capital-constrained inventors and technology...

Intellectual property's road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because liability is difficult to predict and the consequences of infringement are dire, risk-averse intellectual property users often seek a license when none is needed. Yet because the existence (vel non) of licensing markets...

We show that examiner-driven variation in patent rights leads to quantitatively large impacts on several patent outcomes, including patent value, citations, and litigation. Notably, Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) overwhelmingly purchase patents granted by "lenient" examiners. These examiners...