This Article explores the practical consequences of an important shift that has recently taken place in patent theory … justify the patent system based on its role in facilitating information exchange and enabling technical coordination among … intense attention at the level of theory, little has been said about the consequences of this debate for patent policy itself …

The current approach for determining when courts should award injunctions in patent disputes involves a myopic focus on … sometimes could rely instead on a consideration far more relevant to the patent system's goal of promoting innovation: the …. v. FireFly Equipment, LLC, which held that injunctive relief may be appropriate when a defendant infringes a patent that …

Because it must rely on imperfect information, the patent system will inevitably make mistakes. To determine how the … picture of the consequences of error in either direction. On the one hand, erroneous patent awards impose unjustified costs …. On the other hand, erroneous patent denials discourage successful inventors and reduce incentives to create in the future …

To study how governments can improve the quality of patent screening, we develop an integrative framework incorporating … four main policy instruments: patent office examination, pre- and post-grant fees, and challenges in the courts. We show …. Simulations of the model, calibrated on U.S. patent and litigation data, indicate that patenting is socially excessive and the …

Patent scope is one of the important aspects in the debates over “patent quality.” The purported decrease in patent … licensing and litigation costs. However, these debates often occur without well-defined measurements of patent scope. This paper … explores two very simple metrics for measuring patent scope based on claim language: independent claim length and independent …

Inventive methods and processes have long received hostile treatment by the patent system. Courts have long been … skeptical of these claims because of the potential for overbreadth of the patent, particularly if the method is delineated in … uses of the compound. Nevertheless, process claims have received differential treatment in patent law. Congress has adopted …

The principal recent studies of patent reform (NAS (2004), FTC (2003), Jaffe and Lerner (2004)) contend that a uniform … system of patent protection must (or should) be available for anything under the sun made by man based upon one or more of … the following premises: (1) the Patent Act requires such breadth and uniformity of treatment; (2) discriminating against …

patent term in order to best balance the normal scientific processes and alternate hypothesis generation that jointly enable …

This paper analyzes the effects of different sources of R&D funding and patent office attributes on the patenting … influenced by patent office attributes. The state level analysis sheds light on the differing role of the federal government as …

This working paper critically examines the pharmaceutical industry and the incentive argument in patent law. It begins … by framing an overview of the industry and patent law, focusing on U.S. and U.K. law, and multilateral agreements, and … efforts by international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). Next, the paper considers patent incentive …