Hot Topics in Intellectual Property

Section 284 of the U.S. Patent Act provides that if a defendant has been found to have infringed a patent, “the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed” after a finding that the infringement was “willful.”

By David Kline In 2012, the United States Supreme Court in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs invalidated a patent for an innovative diagnostic test for a personalized medicine dosing regimen, and the fallout from this ruling continues to affect the whole...

By David KlineCritics of the patent system claim we are witnessing an “explosion of patent litigation” unlike any in history that is harming business and diverting resources better spent on innovation. According to Lex Machina, a respected legal analytics firm, there...

By David Kline In June of 2016, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in one of the most consequential cases affecting the patent system. On the surface, Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee was about whether the Patent Office (PTO) can use a different standard...

By David KlineThe latest figures indicate that the total cost of patent infringement, pirated software, counterfeit goods, and theft of trade secrets costs the U.S. economy somewhere between $225 billion to $600 billion each and every year. And according to the...

By David Kline Do patents really promote innovation? This is a matter of no small disagreement. So to answer it, let’s start with the basics: What causes innovation in the first place? Economists have repeatedly demonstrated that inventors are driven primarily by the...

by James Pooley Employers today increasingly require their employees to sign a contract promising not to compete for a period of time after they leave a firm. Employers justify these “non-compete” agreements as necessary to protect trade secrets. The protection of...

By David KlineAn arms race in patents. A surge in high-cost patent litigation. And the emergence of unscrupulous patent trolls who use the threat of lawsuits to extort nuisance settlements.These are the costly side effects — the dark side, if you will — of America’s...

by Ognian V. Shentov, Ph.D. Although the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around since the mid-1950s, more recently AI has emerged at the cutting edge of modern innovation, driving technological advances in a staggering array of technical fields. Just in...