Competition between firms to invent and patent an idea, or “patent racing,” has been much discussed in theory, but … seldom analyzed empirically. This article introduces an empirical way to identify patent races, and provides the first broad …-based view of them in the real world. It reveals that patent races are common, particularly in information-technology fields. The …

A bedrock principle of patent law is that old inventions cannot be patented. And a new use for an old invention does … not render the old invention patentable. This is because patent law requires novelty—an invention must be new. But while a …, new-use patents comprise a significant part of the patent landscape—particularly in pharmaceuticals, when drug companies …

The paper compares and contrasts the patent-based indicators, traditionally used to assess a country’s technological … being misleading. Empirically, the paper is based on the statistical information on patent activity of the top-10 patenting … countries. It concludes with a clear demonstration of the need to employ a complex of patent-related indicators to make …

number of arguments for limiting or even eliminating software patents. In particular, they claim that the U.S. Patent and … Trademark Office has done a poor job of reviewing software patent applications, resulting in obvious, trivial patents. They also … exist with the patent-granting process, they do not rise to the level of justifying a ban on software patents. Instead …

Patent law doesn’t look kindly on patent owners who engage in wrongdoing involving the patent. The U.S. Supreme Court … arises in patent litigation when an accused infringer asserts that the patent should be unenforceable if the patentee engaged … information from the Patent Office); patent misuse (anticompetitive licensing practices); unclean hands (business or litigation …

critiquing current patent practice implicitly assumes that the patent functions as a form of technical document ….Careful consideration of the artifices by which a new patent is staged reveals parallels to the known staging of technical papers, including …. Patent formation employs its own decidedly non-scientific strategies for settling controversies and reaching closure. In …

This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent … relationship between regulation - both through competition policy and patent law - and innovation, and the corresponding …

criteria of novelty or non-obviousness. In recent decades, many jurisdictions introduced patent reforms to avoid weak patent … applications and improve legal patent quality. In particular, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), enacted into law in 2011 … any third party to question granted patents, possibly leading to patent revocation or scope reduction. This paper aims to …

plants. Over the past century, the Patent Office and the courts have modulated the ability to obtain or enforce patents for … two competing policy objectives in patent law—enhancing public welfare and promoting innovation. This Article offers a new … approach for courts to protect public health in patent cases—by making public health an affirmative defense to infringement. If …