Edison Fellowship

Aldona Kapačinskaitė, Markets for Trade Secrets (Working paper/in progress)

Melissa Eckhause, Closed Doors to Justice: How the Copyright Claims Board Is Shutting Out Pro Se Litigants, 42 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (forthcoming 2025). [Abstract]

William Matcham and Mark Schankerman, Screening Property Rights for Innovation (January 13, 2025). [See also a blog post by Edison Fellow Dr. William Matcham on this paper]

Matthew Sipe, Trademasks (January 01, 2025).

Nicola Searle, Uncertainty in Knowledge Value and Employee Restrictions (July 08, 2024).

Michael Goodyear, Infringing Information Architectures (March 5, 2024). 58 UC Davis L. Rev. 1959 (2025).

Michael Doane, Patent Law’s Trade Remedy (February 01, 2025). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, Volume 28.

David A. Simon, Gatekeeping Drugs (August 21, 2024). Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper Forthcoming

Sandra M. Aistars, Copyright’s Lost Art of Substantial Similarity, 26 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 109 (2023). [Also available on SSRN] 

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Sandra Aistars of Antonin Scalia Law School comments on a trend among courts hearing visual arts cases to de-emphasize substantial similarity analysis and shift the work of deciding infringement cases almost entirely to the fair use defense.

Yao Zhou, Dynamic Governance of Microbiome Innovation (February 9, 2023)

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Yao Zhou of Morgridge Institute for Research develops a dynamic model for governing microbiome innovation.

Johnathan Liddicoat et al, Repositioning Generic Drugs: Empirical Findings and Policy Implications (September 12, 2022). IIC – International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Vol. 53, pp. 1287-1322 (2022).

Molly Stech, Co-Authorship Between Photographers and Portrait Subjects (Jan 1, 2022). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, Vol. 25, 2022

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Molly Stech of STM comments on subjects’ rights in photographs.

Daryl Lim, Judging Equivalents, 36 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. L.J. 223 (2020) [SSRN]

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Daryl Lim of John Marshall Law School looks at the doctrine of equivalents, which gives patentees protection beyond the literal words of their claims. Professor Lim surveys the law and literature over the past 150 years and provides empirical data that helps to clarify the doctrine’s nature and contextualize its evolution and future.

Runhua Wang, Decoding Judicial Reasoning in China: A Comparative Empirical Analysis of Guiding Cases, 68 Clev. St. L. Rev. 521 (2020) [SSRN]

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Runhua Wang of Chicago-Kent College of Law surveys twenty-two guiding cases that act as binding precedent in IP cases in China and compares them with corresponding judicial precedents in the United States. Dr. Wang argues that these guiding cases are not conventional private or public law, and she explains how they take a utilitarian and pragmatic approach to statutory interpretation.

Adam MacLeod, Public Rights After Oil States Energy, 95 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1281 (2020) [SSRN]

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Professor Adam MacLeod of Faulkner Law discusses the important role of public rights in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, particularly in the recent Oil States v. Greene’s Energy case.

Erika F. Lietzan, The Drug Innovation Paradox, 83 Mo. L. Rev. 39 (2018) [SSRN]

In this paper from our Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship, Professor Erika Lietzan explores a paradox in the way we incentivize innovations in the pharmaceutical industry: The longer it takes to develop a new therapy, the less reward we give to a drugmaker by way of effective patent term. Combining several different data sources for the first time, Prof. Lietzan presents comprehensive empirical findings that bring the extent of the drug innovation paradox into focus. The implications for innovation policy are profound, especially if we wish to see groundbreaking new therapies that are inherently more difficult to develop.

First Meeting
April 10-11, 2025
Virtual

On April 10-11, 2025, IPPI hosted the first meeting of the 2025-2026 Thomas Edison Innovation Law and Policy Fellowship. Meeting 1 is for the purpose of the Edison Fellows presenting their research proposals. Edison Fellows submitted brief synopses detailing their proposed theses and research, and Distinguished Commentators and other Edison Fellows commented on the research proposals.

Second Meeting
September 18, 2025
The University of Akron School of Law
Akron, Ohio

On September 18-19, 2025, IPPI hosted the second meeting of the 2025-2026 Thomas Edison Innovation Law and Policy Fellowship. The meeting was a works-in-progress workshop, where the Edison Fellows presented rough drafts of their papers and received valuable feedback from Distinguished Commentators and other Fellows.

Final Meeting
January 15-16, 2026
Virtual

On January 15-16, 2026, IPPI will host the third and final meeting of the 2025-2026 Thomas Edison Innovation Law and Policy Fellowship. The Edison Fellows will present substantially revised drafts of their research papers and receive feedback from Distinguished Commentators and other Fellows before submission to journals.

2025-2026 Thomas Edison Innovation Law and Policy Fellowship

2024-2025 Thomas Edison Innovation Law and Policy Fellowship