By Kevin Madigan & Sean O’Connor This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee was to mark up a bill limiting patent eligibility for combination drug patents—new forms, uses, and administrations of FDA approved medicines. While the impetus was to curb so-called “evergreening” of drug patents, the effect would have been to stifle life-saving therapeutic innovations. Though […]
Tag: competition
On December 21, 2018, CPIP Senior Scholars Adam Mossoff and Kristen Osenga joined former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader and SIU Law’s Mark Schultz in comments submitted to the FTC as part of its ongoing Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century Hearings. Through the hearings, the FTC is examining whether recent economic […]
By David Lund & Matthew Barblan American businesses are suffering as foreign governments improperly use their antitrust laws to discriminate against American companies. Recently, the United States Chamber of Commerce assembled an International Competition Policy Expert Group to examine this problem. The Group released a report describing particular harmful and inappropriate uses of antitrust law […]
Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog. Earlier this month, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York issued an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) interpretation of a consent decree governing the way the performance rights organization Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) licenses its songs. The ruling was in response to a DOJ statement that […]
This past April, we joined other IP scholars in explaining how the FCC’s proposed set-top box rules would undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners. In reply comments filed last month, the EFF and a group of IP academics argued that the proposed rules would not implicate any copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Yesterday, […]
By Matthew Barblan & Kevin Madigan Earlier this year, the FCC proposed a new regulatory scheme ostensibly designed to improve the market for pay-TV set-top boxes. Chairman Wheeler claimed that the proposed rules would “tear down the barriers that currently prevent innovators from developing new ways for consumers to access and enjoy their favorite shows […]
Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog. Last week, American visual communications and stock photography agency Getty Images filed a formal complaint in support of the European Union’s investigation into Google’s anti-competitive business practices. The Getty complaint accuses Google of using its image search function to appropriate or “scrape” third-party copyrighted works, thereby drawing users away […]
The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. But while the results may be interesting, they’ll also be too narrow to […]
We’ve all heard the narrative about patent licensing firms, often referred to pejoratively as “patent trolls.” These patent owners, who choose to license their innovations rather than build them, are the supposed poster-children of a “broken” patent system. It’s as if commercializing one’s property, just like a landlord leases his land for another to use, […]