We will be hosting our first event this coming Wednesday at 12:30 about Non-Traditional Uses of IP in Product Design. Nicole Rizzo Smith, a lawyer at Ropes & Gray and a BC Law graduate, will join Andrea Rosen, Senior Corporate Counsel and Director of Business and Legal Affairs at PUMA North America, Inc. in Boston [...]

Momenta v. Amphast (Fed. Cir. 2012) ruled that information gathered under another’s patent does not infringe that patent so long as the information is reasonably related to submission under the FFDCA. This includes not only information relevant to FDA approval, but also the maintenance of approval.

Let the size of a population n = 10 and define two sociological organizations characterized as follows. In the first the population is organized with an expansive division of labor, in the second labor is divided according to two discrete and autonomous subsets: Economic theory has worked out that an increase in specialization leads to [...]

People don’t like patent trolls. As non-practicing entities they are seen as economically inefficient, as misappropriating value, and as costing the technology economy money. But the troll adheres to the patent laws, and is justified by the extent of the statutory and common law. A patent is not a security, but begins to resemble one [...]

IPTF-id7482964 Abstract: The licensing or assignment of complex technological rights involves high transaction costs. The following derives a model of when investment in reducing these costs should be undertaken by the assignor.

Equity agreements allow the transferring organization to appropriate the value of knowledge transferred and diffused within the organization, and commercially realized through auxiliary implementation. As such, equity arrangements are economically preferable to royally agreements when:  reVc  >  rlVp Where re is the equality stake as a percentage, Vc is the value of the company, rl [...]

Traditional indifference curves and the utility function are undefined except relative to an endowment. Kahneman explains that at any point of endowment the endowment-dependent utility function is convex for decreases in income and concave for increases. This represents the risk function of the individual with respect to its current endowment. Put differently, an individual may [...]

Precompetitive Efficiencies Precompetitive collaboration usually takes place between either a public and private institution or within a consortium. For example, the NIH is working to identify systematic bottlenecks in the drug approval process. Specifically, the NIH is working to develop a clinical toxicology biochip that mimics human cells to test new drugs against. Such a [...]

Royalty monetization may be formalized as: Invest if r(t) – k > P’ where r(t) is expected revenue from royalties (sales*royalty rate) as a function of time, k is capital, and P’ the threshold of profitability below which investment is not worthwhile. I believe this is a special case of the more general VC imperative [...]

IPTF-id7482963.pdf   Abstract: This article sets out a theory of investment decision-making using the economic concept of expected value

IPTF-id74829523   Abstract: This article traces the development of patent law theory from Edmond Kitch in 1977 to John Duffy in 2004 and David Olson in 2012.

The first round of talks gave 15 minutes for presentation and 15 for Q&A. The first presenters were Gaia Bernstein, Tun-Jen Chiang and Carliss Balwin. 1. For Bernstein, user adoption problems are proportional to the novelty and complexity of the hardware in question, and referencing Benjamin, should be resolved with the formation of an office [...]

The Technology Adoption Problem Established corporations (hereafter firms) make decisions about when and which technologies to adopt to increase revenues and stay competitive. The types of technologies they adopt are diverse, from information technology infrastructures that facilitate communication and customer service to manufacturing equipment that increase output and precision. The process a firm undergoes in [...]

Josef Solterer, writing in 1950, quipped that “If there were no entrepreneurs at all, i.e. all acts are merely repetitive, then all durable goods could be replaced only” (Solterer, 1950).[i] His statement cuts at the heart of the purpose and value of the entrepreneur: to propel an otherwise stagnant society towards progress, improvement, and, generally, [...]

Bilski v. Kappos is a 2010 Supreme Court case concerning process patents, as allowed under section 101 and defined under section 100 as a “process, art or method, include[ing] a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.” At issue in Bilski is whether patent protection should be granted over [...]

          This article attempts to describe the contemporary landscape of University Technology Transfer. Part 1 presents a brief history of the field. Part 2 summarizes the Litan-Mitchell model of university tech transfer and licensing optimization. Part 3 augments this optimization model. Part 4 supplements the licensing gap with entrepreneurial considerations. I.                    University Technology Transfer: An [...]

Introduction In his “Taking the Utilitarian Basis for Patent Law Seriously” Professor Olson suggests we reevaluate the current US patent regime with an eye for economic efficiency.[1] Olson points out that granting a patent is only efficient when the social benefits flowing not from the invention, but the patent itself, outweigh the deadweight loss to [...]

E-PARASITES Bill: ‘The End Of The Internet As We Know It’ | Techdirt. New Video On How PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet | Techdirt.  

Aging ‘Privacy’ Law Leaves Cloud E-Mail Open to Cops. via Wired. Microsoft collects license fees on 50% of Android devices, tells Google to “wake up” via Arstechnica.

Google Brings Books, Authors Guild Brings Lawsuits (via SingularityHub) ITC to investigate Apple based on HTC’s Google-Fueled Patent Complaint (via Techcrunch) Details Emerging On Stingray Technology, Allowing Feds To Locate People By Pretending To Be Cell Towers (via Techdirt) Once Again, Amazon’s One-Click Patent Is Found Not To Infringe On Cordance’s One-Click Patents (via Techdirt) [...]