Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

This think piece examines the issue of patents and innovation in the light of both the TRIPS Agreement and the available evidence. After reviewing the raison d'être of the TRIPS Agreement, it focuses on what can be done within the confines of the WTO to ensure that patent protection stimulates...

The Supreme Court's 2006 eBay ruling marked a turning point in injunctive relief policy. Unfortunately, there seems to be considerable confusion about the implications of the decision. Some authors, concerned over patent holdup and excessive royalty rates, interpret the eBay decision as giving a...

Universities are regarded as key institutions in the knowledge economy. Traditionally, the concept of scientific progress has been linked with an ideal of free and open dissemination of scientific information. At present, however, there is a growing strain to cash in the commercial potential...

This working paper provides a statistical analysis of 74 patent families which cover subject matter relevant to ten COVID-19 vaccines. These vaccines have accounted for 99% of the global COVID-19 vaccine production as of 31 December 2021, comprising over ten billion doses. Eight of them, namely...

An informed (prospective) plaintiff can send a take-it-or-leave-it demand to an uninformed (prospective) defendant with the threat of a lawsuit that may not be credible. In this context, the well-known perfect sepa- rating equilibrium in litigation bargaining game (Reinganum and Wilde, 1986) no...

Governments have strong incentives to allow their inventors to free ride on foreign technologies. They can achieve this result by discriminating against foreigners in the patent system by refusing to grant foreigners a patent for their inventions. International patent law treaties forbid this...

Continuations allow inventors to claim technology developed after the original filing date of their patent, leading to concerns about inadvertent infringement and hold-up. We use the link between patents and standards created by the disclosure of standard essential patents (SEPs) to analyze the...

We analyze the potential spillover effects from patent-infringement litigation initiated by non-practicing entities (NPEs). When a firm is sued by NPEs, its at-risk technology peers also experience significant market value losses around the litigation filing date, losses that are much greater...

This Article summarizes more detailed work done elsewhere and argues that after more than a decade of disjointed application and discussion regarding eBay's precedent, it is time to add clarity to remedies for patent cases. Part I chronicles the history of the eBay case and the party and...