12 Patent Articles for the Holidays

Looking for some patent-related reading for the 12 Days of Christmas (or other holidays)? Here are my tweets (or retweets) on 12 papers that caught my eye this fall. (Note that this list looks best if you view it on the blog webpage rather than in an RSS reader.) You can always check my Twitter page for more recommendations (and other IP-related news).

Christopher Beauchamp: Invented By Law

I have just obtained my copy of Christopher Beauchamp's new book, Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America, which recounts the story of Alexander Graham Bell's legal battles over his telephone patent, and in doing so reconstructs the world of nineteenth century patent litigation. The book is published by Harvard University Press and is available on Amazon.com.

Commil v. Cisco and the Tort of Patent Infringement

Guest post by Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Postdoctoral Associate at Duke Law School. Vishnubhakat is also an expert legal advisor in the USPTO's Office of Chief Economist. His scholarship is available on SSRN, and you can follow him at @emptydoors. The arguments in this writing are the author’s and should not be imputed to the USPTO or to any other organization.

Final CELS Recap: Trolls, Anticommons, M&A

I have already posted on the papers from the Intellectual Property I session at the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) by Aghion et al., Abrams et al., and Frakes & Wasserman. There were three more papers selected for the Intellectual Property II session on the second day of CELS, which I'll briefly describe here:

Commil v. Cisco Cert Grant on Knowledge for Induced Patent Infringement

The Supreme Court granted cert today in its second patent case of the 2014 Term, Commil v. Cisco, on whether a defendant’s belief that a patent is invalid is a defense to induced infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). (The Court did not take the petition's second question, and Justice Breyer is recused.) For those who haven't been paying attention, here's a quick rundown: