Legislators and industry leaders claim that patent strength in the United States has declined, causing firms to innovate in foreign countries. However, scholarship has largely dismissed the theory that foreign patents have any effect on where firms invent, considering that patent law is bound by...

Sexist laws are more prevalent in regions where poverty is endemic. The corollary is also true; the places where women experience less discrimination are typically more developed. The legal academy has drawn several inferences from this observation, including that poverty and the development...

One of the chief anticompetitive effects of modern business lies in antitrust's blind spot. Platform-based companies (“platforms”) have innovated a business model whereby they offer consumers “free" and low-priced services in exchange for their personal information. With this data,...

Intellectual property (IP) infringement has been characterized by over two hundred years of judicial opinions and scholarly writings as an antisocial behavior akin to theft and trespassing. Modern IP laws are faithful to this approach, punishing those who willfully infringe upon patent rights...

Claims of securities fraud had historically failed because investors seldom rely on false or misleading statements when transacting securities. To bolster confidence in securities markets, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a doctrine called “fraud-on-the-market” so that duped investors can show...

The fair use test can hinge on market effects: did the unauthorized copy take sales away from the original artwork? After all, copyright law assumes that a viable market must exist for a work to deserve protection. The issue is that technology has unsettled the economics of creating original art...

The patent system fosters innovation by granting the right to exclude. Since a rightsholder can legally suppress competition and charge monopoly prices, a patent provides a type of antitrust immunity. Even when firms allegedly abuse their exclusive rights through the creation of patent thickets,...