On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential...

The Federal Trade Commission's 2003 innovation report revealed an interesting fact: the pharmaceutical industry is largely satisfied with today's patent system while the electronics, software and Internet industries are not. This article suggests that a difference in governing law accounts for...

This short paper explains how two time-honored principles of tort law - proximate cause and culpability - might clarify and rationalize the law of secondary liability for intellectual-property (IP) infringement. It begins by analyzing how Judge Cardozo's classic opinion in Palsgraf used these...

The Supreme Court astonished copyright and music-industry lawyers by deciding the Grokster file-sharing case unanimously in the industry's favor. The parties and some 61 distinguished amici (including the United States, two Senators and one State) had argued the case largely on the basis of...

For much of the past decade, scholars and others have criticized the U.S. patent system for a variety of legal, economic, political and practical reasons. I have been one voice in that chorus of criticism, with four previous articles over five years. Unfortunately, pending bills for so-called...

This very short paper (three pages) addresses a question raised by Chief Justice Roberts and later Justice Ginsburg in oral argument in MedImmune, Inc v. Genentech, Inc. The Justices asked whether a patentee, having granted a license that is still in force, could seek a declaratory judgment that...