Additive manufacturing techniques, colloquially referred to as 3D printing, increasingly will place pressure on the world’s patent systems in a manner akin to the challenges the copyright systems faced due to digital files. Unlike copyright, however, the digital files themselves do not, under...

Patents are generally considered to be the most territorial of all the various forms of intellectual property. Even patent law, however, has confronted issues involving the application of a U.S. patent to extraterritorial activity. The Supreme Court has expressed an interest in both issues –...

The digital revolution has now moved beyond music and video files. A person can now translate three-dimensional objects into digital files and, at the press of a button, recreate those items via a 3D printer or similar device. Just as digitization placed pressure on the copyright system, so will...

In order to comport with our obligations under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), Congress made it an act of infringement to "offer to sell" a patented invention. Prior to TRIPS, a party could infringe a patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) only by making,...

Patents represent a quid pro quo between the public and the inventor: in exchange for disclosing the invention, the inventor receives the right to exclude others from practicing her invention. They therefore serve as a source technical information. Patents also communicate information to markets...

Intellectual property rights, particularly patents, copyrights, and trademarks, have been the subject of international treaties for quite some time. Those treaties all treat intellectual property rights as national in nature, with attendant territorial limits. The Agreement on Trade Related...