Dinwoodie & Dreyfuss on Brexit & IP

In prior work such as A Neofederalist Vision of TRIPS, Graeme Dinwoodie and Rochelle Dreyfuss have critiqued one-size-fits-all IP regimes and stressed the value of member state autonomy. In theory, the UK's exit from the EU could promote these autonomy values by allowing the UK to revise its IP laws in ways that enhance its national interests. But in Brexit and IP: The Great Unraveling?, Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss argue that these gains are mostly illusory: "the UK will, to maintain a robust creative sector, be forced to recreate much of what it previously enjoyed" through the EU, raising the question "whether the transaction costs of the bureaucratic, diplomatic, and private machinations necessary to duplicate EU membership are worth the candle."

The highlight of the piece for me is that Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss give numerous specific examples of how post-Brexit UK might depart from EU IP policy in ways that serve its perceived national policy interests, which nicely illustrate some of the ways in which the EU has harmonized IP law. For example, in the copyright context, it could resist the expansion in copyrightable subject matter suggested by EU Court of Justices cases; re-enact its narrow, compensation-free private copying exception; or reinstate section 52 of its Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which limited the term of copyright for designs to the maximum term available under registered design law. In the trademark context, Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss describe how UK courts have grudgingly accepted more protectionist EU trademark policies that would not be required post-Brexit, such as limits on comparative advertising. Patent law is the area "where the UK will formally re-acquire the least sovereignty as a result of Brexit," given that it will continue to be part of the European Patent Convention (EPC) and that it still intends to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement—though the extent of UK involvement remains unclear.

Of course, whether such changes to copyright or trademark law would in fact further UK interests in an economic sense is highly debatable—but if UK policymakers think they would, why would they nonetheless recreate existing harmonization? I think Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss would respond that these these national policy interests are outweighed by the benefits of coordination on IP, which "have been substantial and well recognized for more than a century." Their argument is perhaps grounded more in political economy than economic efficiency, as their examples of the benefits of coordination are all benefits for content producers rather than overall welfare benefits. In any case, they note that coordination became even easier within the institutional structures of the EU, and that after Brexit, "the UK will have to seek the benefits of harmonization through the same international process that has been the subject of sustained resistance as well as scholarly critique, rather than under these more efficient EU mechanisms." While it is plausible that the lack of these efficiency gains will tilt the cost-benefit balance in favor of IP law tailored to national interests, Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss suggest that a desire for continuity and commercial certainty will override autonomy concerns.

With all the uncertainties regarding Brexit (as recently reviewed by John Oliver), intellectual property might seem low on the list of things to worry about. But the companies with significant financial stakes in UK-based IP are anxiously awaiting greater clarity in this area.

Gugliuzza & Lemley on Rule 36 Patentable-Subject-Matter Decisions

Paul Gugliuzza (BU) and Mark Lemley (Stanford) have posted Can a Court Change the Law by Saying Nothing? on the Federal Circuit's many affirmances without opinion in patentable subject matter cases. They note a remarkable discrepancy: "Although the court has issued over fifty Rule 36 affirmances finding the asserted patent to be invalid, it has not issued a single Rule 36 affirmance when finding in favor of a patentee. Rather, it has written an opinion in every one of those cases. As a result, the Federal Circuit’s precedential opinions provide an inaccurate picture of how disputes over patentable subject matter are actually resolved."

Of course, this finding alone does not prove that the Federal Circuit's Rule 36 practice is changing substantive law. The real question isn't how many cases fall on each side of the line, but where that line is. As the authors note, the skewed use of opinions might simply be responding to the demand from patent applicants, litigants, judges, and patent examiners for examples of inventions that remain eligible post-Alice. And the set of cases reaching a Federal Circuit disposition tells us little about cases that settle or aren't appealed or in which subject-matter issues aren't raised. But their data certainly show that patentees have done worse at the Federal Circuit than it appears from counting opinions.

Perhaps most troublingly, Gugliuzza and Lemley find some suggestive evidence that Federal Circuit judges' substantive preferences on patent eligibility are affecting their choice of whether to use Rule 36: Judges who are more likely to find patents valid against § 101 challenges are also more likely to cast invalidity votes via Rule 36. When both active and senior judges are included, this correlation is significant at the five-percent level. The judges on either extreme are Judge Newman (most likely to favor validity, and most likely to cast invalidity votes via Rule 36) and Chief Judge Prost (among least likely to favor validity, and least likely to cast invalidity vote via Rule 36), who also happen to be the two judges who are most likely to preside on the panels they sit. Daniel Hemel and Kyle Rozema recently posted an article on the importance of the assignment power across the 13 federal circuits; this may be one concrete example of that power in practice.

Gugliuzza and Lemley do not call for precedential opinions in all cases, but they do argue for more transparency, such as using short, nonprecedential opinions to at least list the arguments raised by the appellant. For lawyers without the time and money to find the dockets and briefs of Rule 36 cases, this practice would certainly provide a richer picture of how the Federal Circuit disposes of subject-matter issues.

Research Handbook on the Economics of IP (Depoorter, Menell & Schwartz)

Many IP professors have posted chapters of the Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law. As described in a 2015 conference for the project, it "draws together leading economics, legal, and empirical scholars to codify and synthesize research on the economics of intellectual property law." This should be a terrific starting point for those new to these fields. I'll link to new chapters as they become available, so if you are interested in this project, you might want to bookmark this post.

Volume I – Theory (Ben Depoorter & Peter Menell eds.)

• Rob Merges – Philosophical Foundations of IP Law: The Law and Economics Paradigm
• Christopher Buccafusco & Jonathan Masur – Intellectual Property Law and the Promotion of Welfare
• Peter Menell & Suzanne Scotchmer – Cumulative Creativity
• Peter Menell – Network Effects
• Herbert Hovenkamp – IP and Competition
• Christopher Yoo – Product Differentiation
• Kal Raustiala & Christopher Sprigman – Innovation in IP's Negative Space
• Michael Abramowicz – Prize and Reward Alternatives to Intellectual Property
• Peter Menell – Notice and Disclosure
• Arti Rai – Patent
• Daniel Gervais – Collective Management
• Jennifer Rothman – Custom & Norms

Volume II – Analytical Methods (Peter Menell & David Schwartz eds.)

• Ted Sichelman & David Schwartz – Data Sources

Patents

• John Allison – Patent Value
• Melissa Wasserman & Michael Frakes – The Prosecution Process at the PTO
• Ryan Vacca – The Federal Circuit as an Institution
• Jonas Anderson & Peter Menell – Claim Construction
• Colleen Chien & David Schwartz – International Trade Commission
• Jorge Contreras – Standard-Setting Organizations
• Michael Mattioli – Patent Pools
• Brian Love – Patent Duration
• Lee Petherbridge & Jason Rantanen – Infringement
• Christopher Seaman – Presumption of Validity
• Jason Rantanen & Lee Petherbridge – Inequitable Conduct and Patent Misuse
• Thomas Cotter & John Golden – Remedies
• Rosemarie Ziedonis & Alberto Galasso – Semiconductors

Copyrights

• Matthew Sag – Copyright Litigation
• Dotan Oliar – Copyright Registration
• Christopher Buccafusco & Christopher Sprigman – Experiments in IP

Trade Secrets

• Michael Risch – Empirical Methods in Trade Secret Research

Knowledge Commons

• Michael Madison, Katherine Strandburg & Brett M. Frischmann, Knowledge Commons

Last updated: April 17, 2019

Kevin Collins on Patent Law's Authorship Screen

Numerous scholars have examined the various functionality screens that are used to prevent non-utility-patent areas of IP from usurping what is properly the domain of utility patent law (see, e.g., the terrific recent articles by Chris Buccafusco and Mark Lemley and by Mark McKenna and Chris Sprigman). But hardly anyone has asked the inverse question: How should utility patent law screen out things that should be protected by non-patent IP? In Patent Law's Authorship Screen (forthcoming U. Chi. L. Rev.), Kevin Collins focuses on the patent/copyright boundary, and he coins the term "authorship screen" as the mirror image of copyright's functionality screen. As with pretty much everything Collins writes, it is thought provoking and well worth reading.