An extensive literature exists regarding the patent disclosure and licensing commitments made by participants in standards-development organizations (SDOs), and how such commitments affect the assertion of standards-essential patents (SEPs). But this literature largely ignores the acquisition...

This paper considers the impact of the new Indian patent regime on the important issue of access to affordable drugs. Access is dependent, in part, on the ability of generic manufacturers to produce cheap generic drugs. Working with the bird flu patent example, this paper will demonstrate that...

Patent licensing contracts commonly prohibit licensees from challenging the validity of the patents at the basis of the contract or penalize such challenges. A considerable debate has emerged as to whether courts should enforce these challenge clauses. We argue that this debate has not gone far...

The US patent system is a foundation of our nation's economy, encouraging innovation and growth. The exclusive right to use and license an invention provides numerous benefits to its inventor and to the broader economy. The patent system is not costless, however, and significant costs stem from...

Originator and generic drug manufacturers frequently settle patent litigation on terms that include a payment to the generic manufacturer in return for the generic to delay entry into the market. These reverse-payment settlements extend the originator's market exclusivity and can amount to...

The pressure to extract rents from academic research results has led many universities to file more patents and to rely on a growing range of monetization strategies including selling patents to Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs). We build a database of university patents granted by the USPTO and,...

Competitors embroiled in a patent dispute always prefer to preserve and share monopoly profits, even if the patent is likely invalid. Antitrust has come to embrace a policy that requires horizontal settlements to be "proportional" in the sense that their anticompetitive effects are commensurate...

Software patents not only do no promote innovation, they instead reduce it. The U.S. Executive branch has recommended against recognizing software patents, and the Supreme Court has never rejected a test (its physical-transformation test) that would invalidate pure business method and software...

Meeting the Paris Agreement target of maintaining global average temperature increases well below 2.0°C requires rapid innovation in climate-friendly, or green, technologies. A substantial literature has mapped the relationship between patent law and climate change, with the concern that...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) receives more prior art submissions by patent applicants than its patent examiners have the capacity to process. Although applicant prior art submissions are highly likely to contain references material to prosecution, evidence suggests that...