Rethinking patent law's presumption of validity.: An article from: Stanford Law Review
Book Details
Author(s)Doug Lichtman, Mark A. Lemley
PublisherThomson Gale
ISBN / ASINB001268LOS
ISBN-13978B001268LO5
AvailabilityAvailable for download now
Sales Rank10,555,911
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
This digital document is an article from Stanford Law Review, published by Thomson Gale on October 1, 2007. The length of the article is 14962 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
From the author: The United States Patent and Trademark Office is tasked with the job of reading patent applications and determining which ones qualify for patent protection. It is a herculean task, and the Patent Office pursues it subject to enormous informational and budgetary constraints. Nonetheless, under current law, courts are bound to defer to the Patent Office's decisions regarding patent validity. That is a mistake. Deference to previous decisions is appropriate in instances where those previous decisions have a high likelihood of being accurate. But to grant significant deference to the initial process of patent review is to defer to an unavoidably and significantly inaccurate signal. Put bluntly, early patent review is not reliable and is unlikely to become so. In this Article, we explain why and propose the creation of a two-tier system of patent validity, with a strong presumption being given to patents after they have been subject to any of a number of intensive review procedures, but only a weak presumption being awarded as a matter of course upon patent issuance.
Citation Details
Title: Rethinking patent law's presumption of validity.
Author: Doug Lichtman
Publication:Stanford Law Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 60 Issue: 1 Page: 45(28)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
From the author: The United States Patent and Trademark Office is tasked with the job of reading patent applications and determining which ones qualify for patent protection. It is a herculean task, and the Patent Office pursues it subject to enormous informational and budgetary constraints. Nonetheless, under current law, courts are bound to defer to the Patent Office's decisions regarding patent validity. That is a mistake. Deference to previous decisions is appropriate in instances where those previous decisions have a high likelihood of being accurate. But to grant significant deference to the initial process of patent review is to defer to an unavoidably and significantly inaccurate signal. Put bluntly, early patent review is not reliable and is unlikely to become so. In this Article, we explain why and propose the creation of a two-tier system of patent validity, with a strong presumption being given to patents after they have been subject to any of a number of intensive review procedures, but only a weak presumption being awarded as a matter of course upon patent issuance.
Citation Details
Title: Rethinking patent law's presumption of validity.
Author: Doug Lichtman
Publication:Stanford Law Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 60 Issue: 1 Page: 45(28)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
