News and Commentary
An article in Harvard Business Review debunks three myths about China’s IP regime. The PRC’s forced technology transfer policies, while abused in the past, have been dialed back in recent years. Additionally, the mere fact that it isn’t a liberal democracy doesn’t guarantee “bad” IP policy; in fact, foreign firms often prevail in infringement cases, and business methods are easier to patent in China than elsewhere.
In an interesting turn of events, the Department of Health and Human Services is suing the drugmaker Gilead for patent infringement in producing the HIV drug Truvada for PrEP. Despite making billions in sales, Gilead hasn’t paid any royalties to the CDC.
In another story of academic journals abusing copyright law to stop free access to academic research, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto William Cunningham was surprised to see that he had received a takedown notice from the American Psychological Association for putting his own paper on his website. Many academics have criticized the journal model, which doesn’t compensate researchers for their findings often backed by taxpayer dollars.
New Research
A new paper from the Patently-O Law Journal examines statistics on patent invalidation post-Alice, finding that the invalidation rate in the Federal Circuit and district courts is around 56.2% over the five-year period.
A paper by J. Gregory Sidak examines what goes into the determination of fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing, using philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Adam Smith, finding that while any licensing arrangement is a net win for society (otherwise it wouldn’t have happened), he argues that the best FRAND term would be the one that leads most quickly to contract formation.
Loading...