Yale Journal of Law & Technology
Volume 3, 2000-2001
Reexamination: A Viable Alternative to Patent Litigation?
By Dale L. Carlson and Jason Crain
3 Yale J.L. & Tech. 0
Recent concern over the state of patent law doctrine has led Congress to pass legislation reforming patent reexamination procedures. The effects of the new procedures will remain uncertain for several years. However, Dale Carlson, Co-chair of the Patent Practice Group at Wiggin & Dana, and Jason Crain, a Yale Law School graduate, discuss the results of a preliminary study of the likely impact of the new inter partes reexamination procedure. In this presentation, Carlson and Crain examine some of the driving forces behind the reform initiative and compare ex parte reexamination procedures with inter partes reexamination procedures. In particular, they address concerns of biases inherent in the new procedure. Ultimately, Carlson and Crain suggest that the new procedure will provide a viable alternative to patent litigation, particularly for small inventors.
Litigation, Privacy and the Electronic Age
By Hon. Lewis A. Kaplan
3 Yale J.L. & Tech. 1
In this speech, the Honorable Lewis A. Kaplan discusses one problem in the legal system created by advances in technology - the tension between the privacy interests of litigants and the increased availability of information in modern society. Although openness is a central tenet of the legal system, until recent advancements in information technology, significant logistical difficulties in obtaining records on all but the most notable cases made most information unavailable to the public. However, advances in technology have greatly facilitated access to the universe of legal documents. Judge Kaplan explores the potential consequences of increased availability of information in a number of contexts and argues that it imposes an important responsibility on Courts to rethink the boundaries between public and private in litigation and to exercise increased caution in dealing with processes that touch on these boundaries.
Internet Privacy: Who Makes the Rules?
By Richard M. Smith
3 Yale J.L. & Tech. 2
Richard M. Smith, Chief Technology Officer of the Privacy Foundation, discusses the ways emerging technology infringes consumer privacy on the Internet. He believes the widespread use of cookies and the growing use of online profiling by companies like DoubleClick create serious privacy problems for people who use the Internet. The solution lies in combining the efforts of programmers, who can find ways to eliminate these profiling mechanisms online, and of lawyers, who can structure legal rules to proscribe information misuse.
Cyberselfish: Ravers, Guilders, Cyberpunks, And Other Silicon Valley Life-Forms
By Paulina Borsook
3 Yale J.L. & Tech. 4
Paulina Borsook, high-tech cultural commentator and author of Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, discusses Silicon Valley's paradoxical "technolibertarian" attitude towards the government and the Big Capital Establishment who made the meteoric rise of the technology industry possible. Borsook, in deconstructing the myth of the freewheeling Silicon Valley technogogue, exposes the fragile connections between the Randian pretensions of today's near-religious egotism and the genuinely libertarian fringe from the salad days of the Internet.
The Sky Is Not Falling: The Effects of Term Adjustment under the American Inventors Protection Act on Patent Prosecution
By William Slate
3 Yale J.L. & Tech. 7
Mr. Slate's article considers the likely effects of the patent term adjustment provisions of the American Inventors Protection Act. Contrary to popular expectations, Mr. Slate argues that the Act's term adjustment provisions will have little practical effect on most practitioners' work.