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Volume 1, Issue 2

Spring, 2011

Reflections on the Patent Scope Revisited Conference

This issue focuses on vehicles external to the patent system and the impact that they may have on determining scope of rights for patents. Included in this issue are conversations about the perceived formalistic behavior of the Federal Circuit and argument for courts to consider extrinsic evidence for interpretation of claim construction, giving way to policy considerations of productive directions for patent scope.

MASTHEAD

Editorial Team
Kristen Cameron
Andrei Marks
Allison Weimer

CONTENTS

Volume 1, Issue 1

Winter, 2010

Reflections from the Trademark Scholars Roundtable

In this volume are published works reflect the conversations from the Fourth Trademark Scholars Roundtable at DePaul University in 2012. The Trademark Scholars Roundtable participants discussed a wide range of approaches to understanding and limiting the ever-increasing sprawl of trademark rights.

MASTHEAD

Editorial Team
Kristen Cameron
Andrei Marks
Allison Weimer

CONTENTS

  • A Cause of Action for “Passing Off/Associational Marketing” By Margreth Barrett, University of California Hastings College of Law from Volume 1, Issue 1 (Fall, 2010) Download this Article in PDF format from The Jerome Hall Law Library’s Digital Repository. Abstract: The Trademark Scholars Roundtable participants discussed a wide range of approaches to understanding and limiting the ever-increasing sprawl of trademark rights. It was a productive and ...
  • Comment: Life in the Fast Lane: Of Presumptions, Defenses, and Burdens By William McGeveran, University of Minnesota Law School – Twin Cities from Volume 1, Issue 1 (Fall, 2010) Download this Article in PDF format from The Jerome Hall Law Library’s Digital Repository.

How Malleability Matters

by Jason Rantanen, University of Iowa College of Law

from Volume 6, Issue 1 (Fall, 2016)

 Download this Article in PDF format from The Jerome Hall Law Library’s Digital Repository.

Abstract: In The Malleability of Patent Rights (2015 Mich. St. L. Rev. 895 (2015)), I developed the concept that patent rights are malleable rather than static and fixed, distinguishing malleability from the idea that patent rights are merely uncertain. Malleability refers to the idea that the strength and scope of patent rights can be altered by the actors who interact with a patent well after it has issued. Patent law is full of mechanisms that allow for these post-issuance changes, yet there seems to be no good theoretical argument that supports malleability. At best, I concluded, the costs of malleability must be weighed against the doctrinal cures, and perhaps those cures themselves would come with greater costs of their own. This Essay builds upon The Malleability of Patent Rights to explain how viewing patent rights as malleable can dramatically alter conventional narratives of the patent system—both narratives told by supporters of strong patent rights and narratives told by those who argue that the patent system must be changed to favor competitors. In doing so, this Essay provides examples of how the malleable nature of patent rights can present real problems for the patent system.