3394 research outputs found
Sort by
Intellectual Property Pools and Aggregation
Get PDFThis chapter in the forthcoming case book Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions: Theory and Practice covers IP pooling, with an emphasis on patents. It begins with a discussion of the theoretical benefit of pooling, including efficiency gains and the avoidance of blocking positions, thickets and anti-commons. It then addresses antitrust analysis of pooling transactions from Standard Oil (Indiana) v. United States (U.S. 1931) through the 2017 DOJ-FTC Antitrust Guidelines. The chapter then turns to pools created to facilitate standard-setting, including the MPEG-2 and 3GPP Pools, and discusses the concept of complementarity and essentiality of pooled assets. It concludes with brief discussions of Princo v. ITC (Fed. Cir. 2010) and the rise of patent aggregators such as RPX Corp
Who Will Check the Checkers? False Factcheckers and Memetic Misinformation
Get PDFThis Essay sets out the need for disciplined fact-checking networks and the likely counterattacks of domestic and foreign propagandists. Part I sets out the continuing social media disinformation campaigns infecting elections worldwide, which stoke internal divisions and undermine public discourse. Part II details factchecking efforts and their effectiveness, with specific attention paid to the neutralization of memes designed to inflame racial hatred. Part III examines disturbing trends that threaten the fact-checking mission, including an internallydriven tendency towards false equivalence and foreign-directed efforts to create imposter fact-checkers. Part IV offers an overview of potential solutions and areas for future study
In Pursuit of Economic Justice: The Political Economy of Domestic Violence Laws and Policies
Get PDFViolence experienced within the family — perhaps the most intimate of all social arrangements — causes devastating consequences. Recent phenomena, including accounts of perpetrators of mass shootings with a history of domestic violence and the #MeToo movement, have called new attention to the costs and consequences of violence against women. Intimate violence wreaks havoc extending beyond the private spaces of the household, thereupon to lay bare the structural shortcomings of public institutions. The act of domestic violence enters the public imagination principally as an offense of physical abuse. It is more complicated. In fact, intimate partner violence (IPV) is often exercised as an act of coercion by abusers who engage in strategies to interfere with their partners’ ability to engage productively in the workplace and deny them control over economic resources, that is, to deny them agency. Certainly, awareness of the insidious facets of economic coercion of IPV has expanded in recent years. However, attention to the efficacy of legal and policy responses to the economic consequences of such abuse has not received commensurate attention. Federal and state laws designed to address economic abuse are applied haphazardly if at all. The laws themselves, moreover, are ill-suited to address the structural issues that contribute to domestic violence in the first place. Similarly, “economic justice initiatives” promoted by anti-violence advocates to “respond to, address, and prevent financial abuse” related to domestic violence fall far short of their intended goals. The primary programmatic focus of the “economic justice initiatives” tend to privilege personal financial literacy as a means to repair consumer credit and enhance victims’ capacities to bank and save as a strategy of economic independence. These programs ignore the overarching neoliberal underpinnings of the political economy that burden victims with the costs of their own remediation through practices designed to benefit financial markets.The recent attention to remediating domestic violence including economic abuse sets in relief the need to introduce analyses of political economy into law practices and advocacy strategies. This article provides such analysis and considers how legal remedies and advocacy strategies that address economic abuse are constrained and shaped market forces. It argues that without an understanding of political economy, programmatic “advances” may in fact exacerbate the economic circumstances of victims as well as abusers. Those whose lives are shattered by domestic violence should not be subjected to a remediation paradigm more suited for those who possess political and financial power than those who do not
Brief of Amicus Curiae Professor Jorge L. Contreras In Support Of Appellee and Affirmance in FTC v. Qualcomm
Get PDFQualcomm participated in the development of 3G and 4G wireless telecommunication standards under the auspices of two SDOs, the Telecommunications Industry Association (“TIA”) and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (“ATIS”). Each of these SDOs had adopted intellectual property rights policies (IPR Policies) that required their participants to grant licenses of SEPs to implementers of their standards on FRAND terms. Yet, over the course of several years, Qualcomm refused to license its SEPs to numerous actual and potential modem chip rivals including MediaTek, Project Dragonfly (a joint venture of NTT DoCoMo, Samsung and several Japanese manufacturers), Samsung, VIA Telecom, Intel, HiSilicon (a subsidiary of Huawei), Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and LGE. The district court also found that when Qualcomm did license its SEPs to smartphone vendors, its royalty rates were “unreasonably high.” Accordingly, the district court found that Qualcomm violated its FRAND commitments to ATIS and TIA, as well as Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, and Section 5 of the FTC Act. As a remedy, the district court entered an injunction that, inter alia, required Qualcomm to license its SEPs on FRAND terms to rival chip makers, and to renegotiate its existing SEP licenses to reflect reasonable royalty rates. Qualcomm now appeals.This brief seeks to draw to the Court’s attention historical, practical and policy matters pertaining to technical standardization that bear on the arguments made on appeal by Qualcomm and its federal agency amici curiae. In particular, this brief argues that: (1) the district court was correct to conclude that Qualcomm is required to license its SEPs to all applicants on FRAND terms, (2) the “reasonable” royalty level required by Qualcomm’s commitments to the relevant SDOs should not be measured by Qualcomm’s own royalties charged to others, and (3) enforcement of the district court’s injunction against Qualcomm will not threaten U.S. national security, and the arguments made to that effect mischaracterize or misunderstand the nature of both patent law and standards.Qualcomm has undeniably played a significant role in the development of wireless telecommunications technology. However, the antitrust laws must be enforced rigorously and even-handedly to eliminate anticompetitive conduct. An enterprise that has engaged in anticompetitive conduct should not be excused simply because it contributes to the national economy or to national infrastructure or defense. Giving Qualcomm special treatment in this case would open the door to such arguments in practically every antitrust case involving major industrial or technology players. And, as such, the force of the antitrust laws would be severely weakened to the detriment of American competition and consumers. Accordingly, this brief urges the Court to affirm the decision and order of the district court
Prosecutors and Mass Incarceration
Get PDFIt has long been postulated that America’s mass incarceration phenomenon is driven by increased drug arrests, draconian sentencing, and the growth of a prison industry. Yet among the major players—legislators, judges, police, and prosecutors—one of these is shrouded in mystery. While laws on the books, judicial sentencing, and police arrests are all public and transparent, prosecutorial charging decisions are made behind closed doors with little oversight or public accountability. Indeed, without notice by commentators, during the last ten years or more, crime has fallen, and police have cut arrests accordingly, but prosecutors have actually increased the ratio of criminal court filings. Why
No Matter How Loud I Shout: Legal Writing as Gender Sidelining
Get PDFIn this essay, I argue that viewing legal writing as a mode of gender sidelining uncovers the urgency for law schools to provide unitary tenure for legal writing programs across all law schools. I recognize that many legal writing faculty are employed under ABA Standard 405(c), a seemingly second-best option to traditional tenure tracks. As Professor Kathy Stanchi (UNLV) comments, however, while Standard 405(c) offers some respite from “job insecurity, intellectual disparagement, and pay inequity,” it ultimately serves as an “institutionalized bar to professional advancement divorced from any reasonable measure of merit.” This essay takes Stanchi’s framing of 405(c) as an irrational categorical exclusion of tenure despite meritorious performance, and extends her reasoning as further evidence of gender sidelining
42nd Annual Foulston-Siefkin Lecture: The Next Wave of Fourth Amendment Challenges After Carpenter
Get PDFThis is an edited and adapted version of the 42nd Annual Foulston Siefkin Lecture, delivered at Washburn University School of Law. The lecture discusses the future of Fourth Amendment law following the Supreme Court’s enormously important decision in Carpenter v. United States. It analyzes Carpenter and argues that its detailed account of the privacy harms caused by government surveillance will be its most important legacy. Moreover, the Court’s emphasis on the risk of privacy harm is not a one-off or a sharp break from previous practice. Carpenter is consistent with a long line of Supreme Court decisions ignoring or reshaping previous Fourth Amendment doctrines when necessary to protect citizens against unchecked surveillance. It also echoes previous cases that focus on the revealing, extensive, or intimate nature of surveillance when assessing whether a Fourth Amendment search has occurred.The lecture then details some of the novel surveillance technologies that are likely to reach the Supreme Court over the next several years. These technologies include drones, smart homes and devices, web surfing surveillance, and pole cameras targeting a specific suspect’s home. Many of these technologies have already been used in police investigations and evaluated by judges in lower court cases. The lecture evaluates how the Supreme Court is likely to resolve these cases and uses the framework of Carpenter and its predecessors to make predictions about the future direction of Fourth Amendment law
Upholding Tribal Sovereignty and Promoting Tribal Public Health Capacity During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFTribes are sovereign nations with authorities and responsibilities over their land and people. This inherent sovereign authority includes the right to promote and protect the health and welfare of their communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought national attention to the health inequities experienced by American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The sovereign legal authority for Tribes to respond to this pandemic has received less attention. This Chapter describes some, but not all, of the urgent legal issues impacting Tribal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes and identifies gaps in federal Indian health policies and highlights how Tribes have exercised their sovereignty to respond and promote resilience in the wake of COVID-19. It also provides examples of intergovernmental challenges. It highlights how ignorance of or animosity to federal Indian law has led non-Tribal governments to infringe on Tribal sovereign rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. It ends by providing a list of recommendations on how law can be better used to support Tribal responses as the pandemic unfolds.This paper was prepared as part of Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19, a comprehensive report published by Public Health Law Watch in partnership with the de Beaumont Foundation and the American Public Health Association
Chapter 20 – Technical Standards: Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) Licensing
Get PDFThis chapter in the forthcoming case book Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions covers licensing transactions involving standards-essential patents (SEPs), including recent legal developments regarding the disclosure (and concealment) of SEPs, fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) royalty rates, non-discriminatory licensing, the availability of injunctive relief for FRAND-encumbered patents, and transfers of FRAND commitments, as well as specific SDO policy clauses and license text addressing each of these issues
Patent Fakes: How Fraudulent Inventions Threaten Public Health, Innovation, and the Economy
Get PDFBecause there is no practical way for patent examiners to verify that the inventions claimed in patent applications actually work, a surprising number of patents are issued for inventions that have turned out to be imaginary, fraudulent or otherwise non-existent. What\u27s more, as illustrated by the recent attempt by Labrador Diagnostics to assert a patent acquired from now-defunct Theranos against firms developing testing kits for COVID-19, these patents present a genuine threat to businesses operating in important sectors of the economy. While it is unrealistic to expect patent examiners to verify the functionality of every claimed invention, there are a range of administrative adjustments that could be made to reduce the number of fake inventions subject to patents