The Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have repeatedly emphasized the public interest in testing the validity of patents, weeding out patents that should not have been issued. But there is one important group of people the law systematically prevents from challenging bad patents. Curiously,...

As scholars who write in intellectual property (“IP”), we write this letter with aspirations of reaching the highest ethical norms possible for our field. In particular, we have noted an influx of large contributions from corporate and private actors who have an economic stake in ongoing...

If the patentee's invention produced unexpected results, the law says, that is pretty good evidence that it wasn't obvious. But the law also says that if it is obvious to try to make something, and if those who might try would expect to succeed, making that thing is not patentable. It's just the...

The case for patent enforcement driving innovation is far from clear. But patents may serve myriad other purposes besides excluding competitors. We should focus more of our attention on how patents are used outside traditional litigation and licensing

In 2011, Congress enacted the America Invents Act (AIA), the most substantial overhaul of the patent system in the past sixty years. The most significant change in the AIA was the move from a first to invent regime to a first inventor to file regime. The goal of the move to first to file,...

We don't want a "Mother, may I?" regulatory regime for innovation. A regulatory regime that requires permission to enter the market or develop a new product is a problem for innovation because it relies on the government, not the innovator, to decide the course of innovation. Giving private...

The Supreme Court's eBay decision requires district courts to weigh the equities before permanently enjoining a defendant. This is a good thing. Since eBay, the tactic of threatening injunctions to, in the Court's words, “extract exorbitant fees” has declined. It's now harder for a patent...