Janet Freilich

Private Law Consortium, Day 1

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Post by Janet Freilich

 

On July 6-7, McGill University’s Faculty of Law and Center for Intellectual Property Policy hosted the Third Annual Private Law Consortium, organized by David Lametti. Participants at the Consortium came from Bar-Ilan University, Harvard University, McGill University, the University of Oslo, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Trento. The Consortium spanned a wide variety of private law topics, including property, torts, contracts, and intellectual property.

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Are There Too Many Patents to Search? A Response — Janet Freilich

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Post by Janet Freilich

Ted Sichelman has written a response to my earlier post on whether there are too many patents to search. He argues that the problem of patent searching is smaller than I suggested. He includes an excellent critique of Christina Mulligan and Timothy Lee’s article on patent search costs and provides some much needed numbers on the magnitude of search time and costs. I agree with him on many points, but I stand by my conclusion that clearance searches are very difficult, if not impossible.

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The Dark Side of Creativity — Janet Freilich

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Post by Janet Freilich

Work-arounds (innovations that arise in the course of designing a technology to avoid another inventor’s patent claim) are a long-standing feature of the patent system. The conventional wisdom is that work-arounds are good:

“We have often noted that one of the benefits of the patent system is the incentive it provides for “designing around” patented inventions, thus creating new innovation.”

Read Corp. v. Porter, Inc., 970 F.2d 816, 823 (Fed. Cir. 1992)

But are they? 

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How Many Patents? — Janet Freilich

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Post by Janet Freilich

I often get asked how many U.S. patents exist and are in force. People’s instinct on this varies wildly. So, to celebrate the achievement of a milestone patent number, I wanted to write about the nine millionth U.S. patent, which issued on April 7th, 2015. Dennis Crouch from Patently-O estimates that three million U.S. patents are currently in force, which seems about right to me.

U.S. Patent No. 9,000,000 is titled “Windshield Washer Conditioner” and claims “a system and method of collecting and conditioning rainwater and other moisture, such as dew, from a windshield of a vehicle and utilizing the collected fluid to replenish the fluids in the windshield washer reservoir.” The familiarity and ordinariness of the technology’s application exemplifies the message in John Golden’s recent article that, although we perceive patents as predominantly high-tech,

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