Patent Reform: Matthew Sag and Kurt Rohde, Patent Reform and Differential Impact. Sag (DePaul) and Rohde (MBHB) want to get patent reform rolling — they suggest that we throw-out the chaff because it slowing down the process. Their differential impact approach helps us focus on reforms that will stop the abuse of “bad patents.” - Software Patents: Robert Merges (Berkeley), Patents, Entry and Growth in the Software Industry. A decade ago, everyone predicted that software patents would turn the industry on its head. Professor Merges finds that software patenting has not been earth shattering. Big companies have adapted and “new firm entry remains robust.”
- Federal Circuit: Professors Nard (CWRU) and Duffy (GWU) suggest that we rethink the CAFC experiment and the virtues of uniformity in their new article, Rethinking Patent Law's Uniformity Principle. CAFC jurisprudence is becoming a bit stale and would benefit greatly from at least one other sister-court deciding patent appeals.
- Takings: Adam Mossoff (Michigan State) is quickly becoming known for his studies on the history of patent jurisprudence. In the wake of Zoltek, where the CAFC refused to protect patent rights under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, Mossoff took the court to task — especially for its continuation of the untrue myth that “patents were never secured as constitutional private property in the nineteenth century.” In his new article, Mossoff concludes that “[i]t is time to set the historical record straight, and to recognize that nineteenth-century courts applied the Takings Clause to patents, securing these intangible property rights as constitutional private property.”
- Google Scholar: For those of you who do not know about it, Google Scholar is getting pretty good and should now be on your agenda for most prior art searches. http://scholar.google.com.
