Today, President Barack Obama signed into law the America Invents Act. It provides for the first major patent law change since 1952, and is intended to ease the way for inventors to bring their products to market.
TAP academics have written extensively on patent issues. Below are key articles that explore a few patent issues: proposed changes to the patent law and process; the impact on innovation; and the nuances of software patents.
Proposed Changes to Patent Law and Process – In The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It, Mark Lemley and Dan Burk point out that industry tailoring is the only way to provide an appropriate level of incentive for each industry. This is because diverse industries, from pharmaceuticals to software to semiconductors, are all governed by the same rules though they innovate very differently. Since making trivial patents easy to enforce means too many patents clog the system, Mark Lemley, Doug Lichtman and Bhaven N. Sampat propose three changes to the patent system in What To Do About Bad Patents. Furthermore, John Duffy and Craig Allan Nard’s paper, Rethinking Patent Law’s Uniformity Principle, proposes that more courts of appeals should be assigned to hear patent cases, so that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals does not develop ideas in isolation.
Patent Law and Innovation – IP in Frontier Industries: Software and Biotechnology, by Wesley Cohen, Mark Lemley and Robert W. Hahn, considers the debate on whether patents are good or bad for cutting-edge technology like software and biotech. In Live and Let Live: A Tale of Weak Patents, Jay Pil Choi asks how to get rid of weak patents that hinder innovation. And regarding legal innovation with patent law, John Duffy relates how ideas about what should be patentable have changed over time in Inventing Invention: A Case Study of Legal Innovation.
Software and Patents – Pamela Samuelson looks at how the law views the export of computer software inLegally Speaking: Software Patents and the Metaphysics of 271(f). In Software and Patent Scope: A Report From the Middle Innings, Robert Merges examines whether predictions that software patents would be harmful came true. Mark Lemley asks what would happen if patents were just like real property in Ignoring Patents. With Software Patent Citations: A Consistent Weighted Ranking, Neil Gandal and Chaim Fershtman look at how to measure the quality of software patents. Finally, Ronald J. Mann, John R. Allison and Abe Dunn ask whether software firms need patents in Software Patents, Incumbents, and Entry.
To view all the patent articles TAP currently is highlighting and find scholars who are well-versed in patent issues, please see our Patent issues page.
