There is a definite economics literature analogizing patents to real options. A patent is like a real option, economists say, because it allows its owner to choose between exclusively commercializing the patented invention sometime during the patent term or foregoing commercialization...

This Article questions the conventional wisdom that the patent system should continue to encourage "early filing" of patent applications-filing at the beginning stages of technological development. The current thinking regarding early filing fails to account for the lack of technical and market...

This paper presents and analyzes data collected from United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reports and a series of FOIA requests for the period from 1996 to 2017. This is the ninth in a succession of studies of the impact of continuing patent applications on USPTO's performance. The...

Intellectual property law exists because exclusive private rights provide an incentive to innovate. This is the upside of intellectual property: the production of valuable goods that society would otherwise never see. In turn, too much intellectual property protection is typically viewed as...

This article empirically studies current claims that patent assertion entities (PAEs), sometimes referred to as ‘patent trolls' or non-practicing entities (NPEs), behave badly in litigation by bringing frivolous patent infringement suits and seeking nuisance fee settlements. The study explores...

Many state and local governments exclude some medical products from the sales tax base, including some that are primarily used by men such as hair growth products. However, tampons and other menstrual hygiene products are subject to sales taxes in most states. A recent social movement advocates...

The nearly twenty-year history of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions has been marked by criticism from content owners, online service providers, and end users. Content owners complain about the cost of monitoring online content and sending take-down notices. Online...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) is showing its age. Enacted in 1998, the DMCA succeeded in its initial goal of bringing clarity to wildly inconsistent judicial standards for online copyright infringement. But as time has passed, the Act has been overtaken—not by developments...

The economic literature emphasizes the importance of patent citations, particularly forward citations, as an indicator of a cited patent’s value. Studies have refined which forward citations are better indicators of value, focusing on examiner citations for example. We test a metric that...

We the undersigned professors of law and economics offer this comment on the USPTO’s notice of proposed rulemaking to change how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board will construe patent claims in its administrative trial proceedings. As a group, our research explores a wide range of issues in...