George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

IP for the Next Generation of Mobile Technology: How the Antitrust Division Devalued Standard-Essential Patents

In advance of our Sixth Annual Fall Conference on IP for the Next Generation of Technology, we are highlighting works on the challenges brought by the revolutionary developments in mobile technology of the past fifteen years.

hand holding a phone with holographs hovering over the screenAs we highlighted in previous posts in this series (see here and here), a 2015 policy change at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Standards Association (IEEE)—a standard-setting organization (SSO) for mobile technologies—placed one-sided restrictions on patent owners that have demonstrably harmed innovator participation and technological advancement. Read more

New Paper Addresses Flaws in Patent Holdup Theory

dictionary entry for the word "innovate"Stephen Haber and Alexander Galetovic of the Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Prosperity (IP2) published a new working paper on the problems with Patent Holdup Theory. In “The Fallacies of Patent Holdup Theory,” Professors Haber and Galetovic show that Patent Holdup Theory is based on three fundamental errors. Read more

How Strong Patents Make Wealthy Nations

By Devlin Hartline & Kevin Madigan

dictionary entry for the word "innovate"How did the world’s wealthiest nations grow rich? The answer, according to Professor Stephen Haber of Stanford University, is that “they had well-developed systems of private property.” In Patents and the Wealth of Nations, recently published in the CPIP Conference issue of the George Mason Law Review, Haber explains the connection: Property rights beget trade, trade begets specialization, specialization begets productivity, and productivity begets wealth. Read more