Category: Past Issues

Michael J. Burstein. Patents have become financial assets. They are valued like securities, traded like stocks, and modeled as options. Our discourse about patents increasingly draws from finance. Firms whose business models depend on patent assertion explain that they are…

Jorge L. Contreras. An increasing number of firms are making public pledges to limit the enforcement of their patents. In doing so, they are entering a little-understood middle ground between the public domain and exclusive property rights. The best-known of…

Caryn Devins, Roger Koppl, Stuart Kauffman & Teppo Felin. Institutions and the incentives they create can be designed or redesigned to produce desired outcomes. But design does not work if social and economic dynamics are “creative.” If it is impossible to…

Danny Englese. As our world becomes ever more connected, with a boundless supply of information and products from all over the world readily accessible through the click of a button, consumers are becoming more motivated than ever to spend their…

Katherine Florey. Choice-of-law doctrine today increasingly presents two distinct faces. When it comes to garden-variety tort and contract cases, conflicts doctrine often produces uncontroversial results with surprisingly little drama. In more complicated litigation, however, the picture is starkly different. It…

Adam M. Gershowitz. Is it legal to use Google Glass while driving? Most states ban texting while driving and a large number also forbid drivers from being able to see television and video screens. But do these statutes apply to…

Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner. Justice Brandeis first famously wrote of a system of federalism where states would serve as laboratories of regulatory experimentation, allowing other states and the federal government to benefit from successful regulatory experiments. Although likely beyond the…

Joanna M. Shepherd & Judd E. Stone II. Despite a rapid increase in economic significance and substantial increase in international use, third-party litigation financing remains poorly understood. No academic consensus takes account of the multiple economic conundrums that third-party litigation financing…

Donald P. Harris. Imagine this scenario. Mary Saint Francis was a longtime librarian of limited means. She had always dreamed of becoming a successful writer and living the way “the other half” lived, retiring from the library and traveling around…

D. Alex Winkelman, David V. Yokum, Lisette C. Cole, Shelby C. Thompson & Christopher T. Robertson. Trials are often imperfect. When inadmissible evidence is introduced or the jury is incorrectly instructed, judges must determine whether the error was prejudicial or merely harmless.…