By: Sara Jeruss, Robin Feldman, & Joshua Walker Any discussion of flaws in the United States patent system inevitably turns to the system’s modern villain: non-practicing entities, known more colorfully as patent trolls. For many years, however, discussions about non-practicing entities have been long on speculation and short on data. In 2011 Congress directed the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to study the effects of non-practicing entities on patent litigation. At the request of the GAO, we collected and coded a set of patent lawsuits filed over the past five years. This article presents our analysis of the data and its implications. The data confirm in a dramatic fashion what many scholars and commentators have suspected: patent monetization entities play a role in a substantial portion of the lawsuits filed today. Based on our sample, lawsuits filed by patent monetizers have increased from 22% of the cases filed five years ago to almost 40% of the cases filed in the most recent year. In addition, of the five parties in the sample who filed the greatest number of lawsuits during the period studied, four were monetizers and only one was an operating company. Download Full Article (PDF) Cite: 11 Duke L.
Month: November 2012
Cooking Protestors Alive: The Excessive-Force Implications of the Active Denial System
By: Brad Turner The Active Denial System (ADS) is unlike any other nonviolent weapon: instead of incapacitating its targets, it forces them to flee, and it does so without being seen or heard. Though it is a promising new crowd-control tool for law-enforcement, excessive-force claims involving the ADS will create a Fourth Amendment jurisprudential paradox. Moreover, the resolution of that paradox could undermine other constitutional principles—like equality, fairness, and free speech. Ultimately, the ADS serves as a warning that without legislation, American jurisprudence may not be ready for the next generation of law-enforcement technology and the novel excessive-force claims sure to follow. Download Full Article (PDF) Cite: 11 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 332
A Comparative Critique to U.S. Courts’ Approach to E-Discovery in Foreign Trials
By: Lauren Ann Ross This Issue Brief explores an oft-neglected irony in international e-discovery: the rationales used by courts to compel discovery against foreign parties embroiled in litigation in U.S. courts may contradict courts’ reasoning when compelling discovery against U.S. parties engaged in litigation overseas. U.S. courts often grant petitions for discovery, increasingly electronic in form, both against a foreign party in the U.S. and against a domestic party abroad. Although allowing discovery in both scenarios appears consistent, it actually ignores important counterconsiderations like fairness and reciprocity in different legal systems. Because the rise of technology has exacerbated the existing problem, making discovery more expensive and time-consuming, this Brief proposes that, when examining 28 U.S.C. § 1782 claims, courts adopt a more conservative approach to foreign-discoverability and a comparative approach to the balancing test set forth in Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Download Full Article (PDF) Cite: 11 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 313