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IPPI is leading a new academic conversation about intellectual property rights and the technological, commercial, and creative innovation they facilitate. Through fellowship programs, research grants, academic conferences, and research symposia, we promote a healthy academic discussion, grounded in rigorous scholarship, that considers the value of patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights.

Below are some selected highlights.

Recent Highlights

  • Tabrez Y. Ebrahim, Artificial Intelligence Inventions & Patent Disclosure, 125 Penn. St. L. Rev. 147 (2020)
    • Description: In his Edison paper at Penn State Law Review, Artificial Intelligence Inventions & Patent Disclosure, Professor Tabrez Ebrahim of California Western School of Law claims that AI fundamentally challenges disclosure in patent law, which has not kept up with rapid advancements in AI, and seeks to invigorate the goals that patent law’s disclosure function is thought to serve for society. In so doing, Prof. Ebrahim assesses the role that AI plays in the inventive process, how AI can produce AI-generated output (that can be claimed in a patent application), and why it should matter for patent policy and for society. He also introduces a taxonomy comprising AI-based tools and AI-generated output that he maps with social-policy-related considerations, theoretical justifications and normative reasoning concerning disclosure for the use of AI in the inventive process, and proposals for enhancing disclosure and the impact on patent protection and trade secrecy.
  • Tomás Gómez-Arostegui & Sean Bottomley, The Traditional Burdens for Final Injunctions in Patent Cases C.1789 and Some Modern Implications, 71 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 403 (2020)
  • Christa J. Laser, Equitable Defenses in Patent Law, 75 U. Miami L. Rev. 1 (2020)
    • Description: In patent law, equitable defenses can play an essential role in multi-million-dollar patent infringement cases. Unclean hands, misuse, or estoppel can render a potential verdict unenforceable. Professor Christa Laser of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law dives into the unique and unsettled role of equity in her new Edison paper, Equitable Defenses in Patent Law (University of Miami Law Review 2020). Prof. Laser compares two theories to determine how courts might interpret undefined language governing equitable defenses in patent statutes, and she analyzes whether Congress codified preexisting decisional law or expanded it with the 1952 Patent Act. Finally, Prof. Laser suggests that Congress could delegate its authority to an agency to handle the ever-changing patent landscape.
  • Talha Syed, Owning Knowledge: A Unified Theory of Patent Eligibility (American University Law Review, Vol. 70, 2021)
    • Description: In his draft Edison paper, Owning Knowledge: A Unified Theory of Patent Eligibility, Professor Talha Syed of Berkeley Law argues that the confusion surrounding patentable subject matter under Section 101 is two-fold. First, it results from our failure to develop a functionality doctrine that can clearly distinguish technological applications of knowledge from other forms of knowledge. Second, he offers a root cause of this failure. There is a distracting preoccupation in patent law with “physicalism,” that is, the notion that a patent is awarded for a thing (tangible or not) rather than for knowledge of that thing. In order to move forward, Prof. Syed states that we must first unwind the physicalist assumptions that are tangled up in our Section 101 analyses. Only then can we develop a functionality doctrine free of those encumbrances.
  • Deepak Hegde, Joan Farre-Mensa, & Alexander Ljungqvist, What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery”, 75 J. Finance 639 (2020)
    • Description: Deepak Hegde of New York University and co-authors Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist have published a new paper from our Edison Fellowship program entitled What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery” in the Journal of Finance. The paper provides empirical evidence that startups that obtain their first patent have, on average, 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth five years later. Utilizing a unique dataset drawn on unprecedented access to USPTO internal databases, the study also shows with causal evidence that these startups pursue more—and higher quality—follow-on innovation as the first patent boosts innovation by facilitating their access to funding.
  • Olena Ivus, Edwin L.-C. Lai, & Ted M. Sichelman, An Economic Model of Patent Exhaustion, 29 J. Econ. & Manag. Strategy 816 (2020)
    • Description: IPPI Senior Scholar Ted Sichelman of the University of San Diego, along with Olena Ivus and Edwin Lai, published a paper in the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy entitled An Economic Model of Patent Exhaustion. The paper, which comes from the Edison Fellowship program, uses a sophisticated economic model to show that, contrary to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Impression Products v. Lexmark, mandatory patent exhaustion can be highly inefficient, particularly when transaction costs are low. The authors show that it is socially optimal for patent owners to be able to opt-out of exhaustion via contract when the social benefits from buyer-specific pricing outweigh the social costs from transaction cost frictions in individualized licensing.

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