Technology and I.P.

By Christina Bohannan and Herbert Hovenkamp, law professors at The University of Iowa College of Law

Promoting rivalry in innovation requires a fusion of legal policies drawn from patent, copyright, and antitrust law, as well as economics and other disciplines. Creation without Restraint looks first at the relationship between markets and innovation, noting that innovation occurs most in moderately competitive markets and that small actors are more likely to be truly creative innovators. Then we examine the problem of connected and complementary relationships, a dominant feature of high technology markets. Interconnection requirements, technological compatibility requirements, standard setting, and the relationship between durable products and aftermarket parts and supplies all involve interconnection, or “tying.” But views about the practice tend toward two extremes. Some see tying as inherently anticompetitive, while others view it as unexceptionally benign. In fact, bundling products or technologies is essential in high technology markets and most of it is socially beneficial, but some possibilities of abuse nevertheless remain. 

Identifying good substantive legal rules for facilitating innovation is often very difficult. Two generations ago antitrust law addressed problems of complexity by shifting the focus to harm. The courts reasoned that they could often avoid unmanageable substantive doctrine by considering whether the plaintiff had suffered the appropriate kind of injury. Plaintiffs who are injured by more rather than less competition should be denied a remedy. In the case of patent and copyright law, the appropriate question is whether an infringer’s conduct served to undermine the right holder’s incentive to innovate, with incentives measured from before the innovation occurred. Some IP infringements do no harm to the incentive to innovate; others actually make the right more rather than less valuable. In these situations relief should be denied without inquiry into the merits of the infringement case.

Patent and copyright law are both in crisis today – major problems include overissuance, overly broad and ambiguously defined protections, and rules that permit both patentees and copyright holders to make broad claims on unforeseen innovations that lie in the future. The result has been that many patents are valueless, while others have very considerable value precisely because they enclose ideas or technologies that rightfully belong in the public domain. Patent law could be greatly improved if inventions were tied to real, nonobvious technology actually in the patentee’s possession at the time its application was filed, and if patentees were obliged to give comprehensible and timely notice of their inventions. Copyright law would be greatly improved by an aggressive theory of harm that reduces the scope of the derivative works right and increases the scope of fair use. In Eldred the Supreme Court suggested that the First Amendment should not be an important copyright infringement defense because the Constitution’s IP clause and the initial copyright act were passed “close in time,” leading to an inference that Congress must have considered these concerns. But the original copyright act bears little resemblance to the expansive coverage granted by the current Act, passed almost two centuries later.

By Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law

In an effort to educate law students, the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has established “The Citizen Amicus Project” which invites current law students to contribute their own insights to a current Supreme Court case now being decided. The goal of this brand new project is to encourage law students to contribute to a national dialogue on constitutional issues that are relevant to their lives.

The project exists as a web-based constitutional debate about ongoing Supreme Court cases.  Similar to formal amicus briefs, the Citizen Amicus Project seeks input from interested parties to help resolve constitutional issues. The goal is to provide a focused opportunity for law students to contribute to a national legal question that affects law students. 

This first iteration of the Citizen Amicus Project focuses on the Fourth Amendment. Under current Fourth Amendment doctrine many of the Supreme Court’s determinations turn on what society considers objectively “reasonable.” What is objectively reasonable, of course, is a contested issue, and law students can weigh in on this standard as well as any other subset of Americans.

More specifically, the 2011-2012 Project focuses on the Fourth Amendment questions arising out of warrantless GPS surveillance. Almost all law students own cell phones, computers, and GPS devices that can be tracked and, thus, personally can understand the liberty interests at stake in warrantless tracking. 

In November, the Supreme Court will hear United States v. Jones a case that raises questions of whether warrantless GPS tracking violates the Fourth Amendment. In Jones, the Supreme Court will review two specific questions: