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Purposeful ignorance in law reviews?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

PatentHawk's comment Law school professors often suffer a sordid reputation for strange obsessions, an inability to see the forest for the trees., sort of aimed in the direction of Mark Lemley, reminded IPBiz of a law review article that appeared in 2008, mentioned previously in IPBiz.

The article ("note") was titled BAD MEDICINE: ECONOMIC DISADVANTAGE AND CLAIM LIMITATION IN AN AILING PATENT OFFICE [15 J. Intell. Prop. L. 343], and was authored by Elisabeth Marie Koehnemann, listed as the Executives Articles Editor at JIPL.

Interesting text appeared in footnote 47: Mark A. Lemley & Bhaven N. Sampat, Is the Patent Office a Rubber Stamp? 4-9 (Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 999098, 2007), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id=999098 (identifying data controversies in calculating patent grant rates).

The parenthetical comment should have stated: (reversing Lemley's position on patent grant rate previously adopted in "Ending Abuse...," BULR). In "Ending Abuse...", Lemley had said Quillen/Webster was preferred over Clarke, and in "Rubber Stamp", Lemley did a floppo, sort of like his KSR floppo. In the future, we might see a Metabolite floppo. [As a further point, in "Ending Abuse...", Lemley said something about Clarke's paper in JPTOS that simply was not true, but neither Lemley nor BULR ever issued a correction.]

"Rubber Stamp" does not appear to have been published in a law review (yet).

Another masterpiece from JIPL is: SYMPOSIUM: JAMES BESSEN AND MICHAEL J. MEURER'S PATENT FAILURE: HOW JUDGES,BUREAUCRATS, AND LAWYERS PUT INNOVATORS AT RISK: ARTICLE: PLUMB LINES INSTEAD OF A WRECKING BALL: A MODEL FOR RECALIBRATING PATENT SCOPE 16 J. Intell. Prop. L. 1

Hmmm, did PatentHawk say anything about lemmings?

Previous IPBiz post on Koehnemann:

The PTO should wait for the courts on Tafas? Is there a choice?

***Separately-->

Patently-O's: No No Words: What Words do you Avoid in Patent Applications

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).