How Courts Adjudicate Patent Definiteness and Disclosure

Section 112 of the Patent Act requires patentees to clearly explain what their invention is (a requirement known as claim definiteness), as well as how to make and use it (the disclosure requirements of enablement and written description). Many concerns about the modern patent system stem from these requirements. But despite the critical importance of § 112 to the functioning of the patent system, there is surprisingly little empirical data about how it has been applied in practice. To remedy the reliance on anecdotes, we have created a hand-coded dataset of 1144 reported court decisions from 1982 to 2012 in which U.S. district courts or the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rendered a decision on the enablement, written-description, or claim-definiteness requirements of § 112. We coded validity outcomes under these three doctrines on a novel five-level scale so as to capture significant subtlety in the strength of each decision, and we also classified patents by technology and industry categories. We also coded for a number of litigation characteristics that could arguably influence outcomes. Although one must be cautious about generalizing from reported decisions due to selection effects, our results show some statistically significant disparities in § 112 outcomes for different technologies and industries—although fewer than the conventional wisdom suggests, and not always in the direction that many have believed. Just as importantly, our analysis reveals significant relationships between other variables and § 112 litigation outcomes, including whether a district court or the Federal Circuit made the last decision in a case, whether a patent claim was drafted in means-plus-function format, and whether a case was decided before or after Markman v. Westview Instruments. Our results showing how § 112 has been applied in practice will be helpful in evaluating current proposals for reform, and our rich dataset will enable more systematic studies of these critical doctrines in the future

SMALL FARM POLYPERIOD PLANNING MODEL FOR DEVELOPING ECONOMIES

Farm Management,

A TECHNIQUE TO ESTIMATE INPUT PRODUCTIVITY FROM FARM DATA

Productivity Analysis,

An Analysis of the Vertical Price-Nonprice Dichotomy

The debate concerning the appropriateness of existing antitrust standards for distribution (vertical) restrictions continues unabated. Some observers have criticized current national antitrust policy, which treats vertical price restraints (usually referred to as either resale price maintenance or vertical price fixing) as per se illegal and vertical nonprice restraints as illegal only if found unduly anticompetitive under the rule of reason, as being seriously lacking in theoretical unity. These commentators usually contend that resale price maintenance, like vertical nonprice restraints, should be judged under the rule of reason. A few have even called expressly for a rule of per se legality for all forms of vertical restraint On the other hand, current policy toward vertical restrictions is not without scholarly support

Context, Properties, and Constitutionality of Nonconsensual Arbitration: A Study of Four Systems, The

The purpose of this article is to analyze the context, properties, and constitutionality of these instances of nonconsensual arbitration. Although FIFRA data arbitration and the constitutional challenges to which it has been subjected will receive the most extensive study, the other examples also will be explored in some detail. It is first necessary, however, to lay some groundwork. Each of the nonconsensual arbitration systems to be studied, including FIFRA data arbitration, draws the inspiration for its design and operation from contract-based commercial arbitration. To aid in the understanding of the former, Part II discusses the fundamental nature and legal framework of the latter. Part III examines the emergence of a clearly growing trend toward nonconsensual arbitration, and Part IV analyzes the use of court-annexed arbitration for private-claims resolution. Parts V and VI explore multiemployer pension plan withdrawal liability arbitration and commodity futures broker-customer arbitration, respectively, as two important expressions of the trend in the regulatory context. In Parts IV, V, and VI, the context, properties, and constitutionality of the three systems are examined in some depth. Part VII analyzes FIFRA data compensation arbitration in detail. In order to present the context and properties of this arbitration system properly, Part VII thoroughly explores the complex regulatory scheme of which it is an integral part. This part then studies the constitutional concerns generated by the program and its operation. Part VIII concludes the article by briefly reflecting upon the four systems and inquiring whether there remain any meaningful constitutional limitations on experiments with nonconsensual dispute resolution, particularly in the regulatory domain. After considering some of these experiments that at first blush seemed to test the constitutional margin, we must ask whether this margin was ever where we may have supposed it to be and, if so, whether it has moved