An “invention,” as used in the United States patent laws, refers to anything made by man that employs or harnesses a law of nature or a naturally occurring substance for human benefit. A watermill, for instance, harnesses the power of gravity to run machinery. But legal methods, such as tax...

Courts are rarely asked to judge beauty. Such a subjective practice would normally be anathema to the ideal of objective legal standards. However, one area of federal law has a long tradition of explicitly requiring courts to make aesthetic decisions: the law of design. New designs may be...

Courts and commentators are sharply divided about how to assess “reverse payment” patent settlements under antitrust law. The essential problem is that a PTO-issued patent provides only a probabilistic indication that courts would hold that the patent is actually valid and infringed, and...

The decision to regulate involves the identification of markets where simple assignment of property rights is not sufficient to ensure satisfactory competitive results, usually because some type of market failure obtains. By contrast, if property rights are well defined when they are initially...

Many patent applications are rejected upon initial submission, but they are almost never rejected with absolute finality. Further, subsequent to filing its original application a patent applicant might wish to write an application with broader or somewhat different claims, or perhaps add claims...

Currently trademark bullying has become a serious concern for many small businesses that feel as though powerful corporations are abusing aggressive trademark enforcement and litigation techniques to crush genuine competition. No doubt these concerns merit the serious consideration of all...

Patent assertion entity litigation is increasingly being viewed as a pathological condition of the patent system. The large damage awards and settlements that PAEs have been able to extract raise the issue of whether PAEs are particularly good at identifying high-value patents. This paper, based...

Rapid technological advances and commercialisation of the emerging field of nanotechnology will challenge traditional international and domestic regulatory regimes, including intellectual property rights. This article examines the role of the World Trade Organisation's Trade-Related Intellectual...