Recalibrating Patent Venue

For most of patent law’s 200-plus year history, patent holders could sue only in the district inhabited by the defendant. In 1990, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided that the scope of permissible venue extended to all districts with personal jurisdiction over the defendant. In recent years, patentees have flocked to certain districts, fueling the widespread perception that patentees, particularly those that do not practice their patents, called non-practicing entities (“NPEs”), are abusing forum. Responsive to these concerns, Congress and the courts have moved to reinstate a more restrictive rule, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2017 TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC decision to limit venue to locations of the defendant. Yet, incredibly, to date there has been no measure of the overall pervasiveness of forum shopping and whether TC Heartland or any other venue reform will change this phenomenon. We address this gap by estimating the differential impacts of reform on filing patterns. We find, based on an analysis of approximately 1500 patent and non-patent cases filed in 2015 that about 86% of patent cases—a striking share—were brought outside of the defendant’s home district. This practice is not limited to non-practicing entities, however; corporations, universities, and individuals all filed outside of defendant districts. Things would have been different if venue were reformed, but much depends on how reform is implemented. If the Supreme Court’s decision to restrict venue to where the defendant resides or has an established place of business were already in effect, an estimated 58% of 2015 cases would have had to have been filed in a different venue. If the Congressional proposal to change venue to include home districts with research or manufacturing connections to the case had been in effect, about half the NPE cases in our sample would have needed to be refiled in another district, but only 14% of the operating company cases would. Cases would have become less concentrated in a single district, with the top district, Delaware, capturing 20–24% of cases, but the top three districts, the District of Delaware, the Eastern District of Texas, and the Northern District of California, would still have the majority of cases. Regardless of the reform, we expect smaller defendants to get more from venue relief than larger defendants because of their relatively smaller footprints. Among NPEs, universities, individuals, and small companies should be impacted to a lesser extent than patent assertion entities (“PAEs”), considerably so if the VENUE Act were enacted

Analyses of decay constants and light-cone distribution amplitudes for s-wave heavy meson

In this paper, a study of light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDAs) for $s$-wave heavy meson are presented in both general and heavy quark frameworks. Within the light-front approach, the leading twist light-cone distribution amplitudes, $\phi_M(u)$, and their relevant decay constants of heavy pseudoscalar and vector mesons, $f_M$, have simple relations. These relations can be further simplified when the heavy quark limit is taken into consideration. After fixing the parameters that appear in both Gaussian and power-law wave functions, the corresponding decay constants are calculated and compared with those of other theoretical approaches. The curves and the first six $\xi$-moments of $\phi_M(u)$ are plotted and estimated. A conclusion is drawn from these results: Even though the values of the decay constants of the distinct mesons are almost equal, the curves of their LCDAs may have quite large differences, and vice versa. Additionally, in the heavy quark limit, the leading twist LCDAs, $\Phi_{Qq}(\omega)$ and $\Phi_{Qq}(\omega)$, are compared with the $B$-meson LCDAs, $\psi_+(\omega)$, suggested by the other theoretical groups.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, some typos are corrected, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Control of tetrahedral coordination and superconductivity in FeSe0.5Te0.5 thin films

We demonstrate a close relationship between superconductivity and the dimensions of the Fe-Se(Te) tetrahedron in FeSe0.5Te0.5. This is done by exploiting thin film epitaxy, which provides controlled biaxial stress, both compressive and tensile, to distort the tetrahedron. The Se/Te height within the tetrahedron is found to be of crucial importance to superconductivity, in agreement with the theoretical proposal that (pi,pi) spin fluctuations promote superconductivity in Fe superconductors

Accuracy of Electronic Wave Functions in Quantum Monte Carlo: the Effect of High-Order Correlations

Compact and accurate wave functions can be constructed by quantum Monte Carlo methods. Typically, these wave functions consist of a sum of a small number of Slater determinants multiplied by a Jastrow factor. In this paper we study the importance of including high-order, nucleus-three-electron correlations in the Jastrow factor. An efficient algorithm based on the theory of invariants is used to compute the high-body correlations. We observe significant improvements in the variational Monte Carlo energy and in the fluctuations of the local energies but not in the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo energies. Improvements for the ground states of physical, fermionic atoms are found to be smaller than those for the ground states of fictitious, bosonic atoms, indicating that errors in the nodal surfaces of the fermionic wave functions are a limiting factor.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, Late

How can Congress Prevent the Issuance of Poor Quality Patents? Questions for the Record for Colleen V. Chien

This is a submission of responses by Prof. Colleen Chien to questions for the record posed by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) at a October 30th hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, entitled, Promoting the Useful Arts: How can Congress prevent the issuance of poor quality patents

Holding Up and Holding Out

Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it is most vulnerable—after it has implemented a technology—and is able wrest a settlement because it is too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises, and the ex ante assertion of technology patents whether in the smartphone war, standards, or patent “troll” context. Hold-up theory has been embraced by thought leaders and fueled the current drive by Congress and President Obama to reform the patent system. This Article makes the counterintuitive case that hold-up theory is wrong—or at least incomplete—because it is missing is full consideration of the other side—the side of hold-out. When large companies systematically “hold out” on patentees, they have no choice but to work with efficient patent enforcers, or “trolls.” When small inventors are unfairly disadvantaged in the marketplace, jurors may give them relief in court. Considering hold-out and hold-up together provide a more complete picture than focusing on either theory alone. This perspective reveals surprising pathways to a better patent system, focused on the design, rather than the doctrine, of patent law. Instead of trying to eliminate all technology patents, or to enforce all of them, we should try to price them appropriately and reduce the distortions they produce. Instead of trying to make patent law perfect, we should make it cheaper, more streamlined, and more equitable. To do so, lawmakers should prioritize improving coordination across courts and agencies, reducing costs through early dispositive rulings and valuation, and promoting symmetry between parties and proportionality about the value of a patent through fee- and cost-shifting. Each of these steps would go a long way to curbing both hold-up and hold-out

Holding Up and Holding Out

Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it is most vulnerable—after it has implemented a technology—and is able wrest a settlement because it is too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises, and the ex ante assertion of technology patents whether in the smartphone war, standards, or patent “troll” context. Hold-up theory has been embraced by thought leaders and fueled the current drive by Congress and President Obama to reform the patent system. This Article makes the counterintuitive case that hold-up theory is wrong—or at least incomplete—because it is missing is full consideration of the other side—the side of hold-out. When large companies systematically “hold out” on patentees, they have no choice but to work with efficient patent enforcers, or “trolls.” When small inventors are unfairly disadvantaged in the marketplace, jurors may give them relief in court. Considering hold-out and hold-up together provide a more complete picture than focusing on either theory alone. This perspective reveals surprising pathways to a better patent system, focused on the design, rather than the doctrine, of patent law. Instead of trying to eliminate all technology patents, or to enforce all of them, we should try to price them appropriately and reduce the distortions they produce. Instead of trying to make patent law perfect, we should make it cheaper, more streamlined, and more equitable. To do so, lawmakers should prioritize improving coordination across courts and agencies, reducing costs through early dispositive rulings and valuation, and promoting symmetry between parties and proportionality about the value of a patent through fee- and cost-shifting. Each of these steps would go a long way to curbing both hold-up and hold-out