Patent Law

Design is the currency of modern consumer culture and increasingly the subject of intellectual property claims. Apple, the world's biggest company, owes its value largely to design. Notably, where courts once rebuffed Apple's claim to own a popular graphical user interface, today design-related claims lead to billion dollar judgments in Apple's favor.

On September 9 and 10, Professor Peter Lee and I participated in an invitation-only roundtable on "The Psychology and Sociology of Creativity and Intellectual Property" at the Stanford Law School.

I took this photo during the roundtable event. Professor Lee is second from left.

Scholarly works by Associate Dean and Professor Madhavi Sunder and Professor Peter Lee are among the most-cited Intellectual Property law articles, according to a new entry on the blog Written Description.

Professor Peter Lee and Associate Dean and Professor Madhavi Sunder

The editors of the UC Davis Law Review just sent this message to the law faculty. The new issue looks outstanding. Congratulations to the UC Davis Law Review!

Dear King Hall Faculty,

Professor Peter Lee, a leading scholar of patent law, has a new article that will be published in the Michigan Law Review next year. The article is titled "The Supreme Assimilation of Patent Law," and it presents a descriptive theory of Supreme Court patent jurisprudence.

Here is the abstract:

Faculty members at UC Davis School of Law publish truly unique scholarship that advances the legal profession. You can view their scholarly works via the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Legal Scholarship Network. An archive can be found on this web page.

What follows here is the most recent collection of papers:

The intellectual property world is in an uproar about Judge Richard Posner’s salvo this month against United States patent law. In a piece in The Atlantic, Judge Posner argues that there are too many patents in America. He observes that patents can hamper innovation, just as they can incentivize it, and that they may be unnecessary to induce innovation in many industries.

Last November, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Bilski v. Kappos, a patent case with significant implications. At issue in Bilski is whether a method for hedging risks in commodities trading comprises patentable subject matter.