Intellectual Property Law

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Volume 92.5
On FRAND-ly Terms: Examining the Role of Juries in Standard-Essential Patent Disputes
Marta Krason
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; M.S., Stanford University; J.D. Candidate 2026, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Masur and the editors and staff of The University of Chicago Law Review, including Andy Wang, Zoë Ewing, Jonah Klausner, Karan Lala, Eric Haupt, Eugene DeCosse, and Helen Chamberlin, for their thoughtful advice and insights.

Holders of patents covering technology standards, known as standard-essential patents (SEP), control the rights to an invention with no commercially-viable alternative or that cannot be designed around while still complying with a standard. This gives SEP holders significant leverage in licensing negotiations. Standards development organizations (SDOs) play an important role in curbing opportunistic behavior by patent holders. SDOs require SEP holders to license their patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. However, courts have mischaracterized FRAND commitments, concluding that these disputes carry a Seventh Amendment guarantee to a jury trial. This mischaracterization undermines the fair resolution of FRAND disputes, and a different approach is necessary. In this Comment, Marta Krason proposes an alternative analytical framework that more accurately characterizes FRAND disputes by drawing on principles from contract and property law, concluding that the constitutionally proper adjudicator is a judge, not a jury.

Contract Law Contracts Intellectual Property Technology
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87.7
Simplifying Patent Venue
Micah Quigley
BA 2018, Grove City College; JD Candidate 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

Many thanks to Colin Freyvogel for helping me sort out this piece’s most difficult arguments, and to my parents for taking an interest in this project for my sake.

From the 1990s to 2017, life was good for plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits. In 1990, the Federal Circuit1 interpreted the patent venue statute—28 USC § 1400(b)—to allow patent venue in any district with personal jurisdiction over a corporate defendant.

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85.6
i4i Makes the Patent World Blind
Michael J. Conway
BA 2014, Loyola University Chicago; JD Candidate 2019, The University of Chicago Law School

A patent does not magically ensure that an inventor receives the twenty-year personal monopoly to which she is entitled over the personal and commercial use of her invention. To maximize a patent’s value, the patent holder must diligently enforce the patent in federal court against infringers.

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Response
Do Patent Challenges Reduce Consumer Welfare?
Gregory Dolin, M.D.
Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Medicine and Law, University of Baltimore School of Law; Georgetown University Law Center, JD; State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine, MD; The George Washington University, MA; Johns Hopkins University, BA

I would like to thank Dmitry Karshtedt for his helpful comments and Stephen Yelderman for the opportunity to engage with his paper over the last few months.

I.  Patents, Antitrust, and Competition

Consumer Law Intellectual Property Patent

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