Patent Law

JOTWELL: Journal of Things we Like (LOTS)

By Dennis Crouch

[JOTWELL] Many of us enjoy legal theory of all sorts (even that outside of patent law) but we do not have time to sift through the several thoursand law review articles published each year. 

A new project headed by Professor Michael Froomkin (Miami) focuses attention on legal scholarship that is new and noteworthy — and does so in digestable 1,000 word essays.

[Patent Utility Redux] In a recent JOTWELL essay, Professor John Duffy (GWU) discusses a new article by Professer Michael Risch (soon to be Villanova). Risch's article is titled Reinvinting Usefulness and is forthcoming in the BYU Law Review (SSRN Draft). Duffy writes:

Michael Risch reexamines patent utility doctrine and advances creative and insightful arguments for requiring that all inventions demonstrate 'commercial utility' prior to patenting.  The highest compliment I can pay this article is not that I agree with it—I'm still somewhat doubtful—but that the article has forced me to think hard about an area I foolishly thought to be largely barren.  The article is memorable precisely because its thesis is unsettling; it demands rethinking of utility doctrine and other aspects of the patent law.

The JOTWELL IP section can be followed here: http://ip.jotwell.com/.

Notes:

• Read Professor Duffy's Review
• Read JOTWELL

Full post as published by Patently Obvious on May 28, 2010 (boomark / email).