Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law July 9, 2013 It is almost impossible for a judge or jury to accurately determine the amount of money that a patent holder should be paid to compensate for past patent infringement. To run the math right, that determination requires a rich understanding of the technology at issue; [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 5, 2013 As a faculty member who teaches copyright law at both the Law School and the Business School, I receive a large number of emails each week with questions about how copyright law works in the real world. The statute, my students realize, says whatever it [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law March 11, 2013 I had the chance last month to participate in a public discussion about Facebook and, in particular, Facebook’s privacy policies. I am not a privacy expert by any means. And I barely use my Facebook account. But, in preparing for the event, I found myself [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law February 7, 2013 Copyright lawyers well know that the First Amendment cannot be read too literally. Yes, the First Amendment tells us that Congress shall “make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” But, as copyright lawyers also well know, copyright law is itself a law, made [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law November 27, 2012 In recent years, courts have struggled with the question of exactly what types of inventions should be eligible for patent protection. On the one hand, judges consider it inappropriate to allow any single patent holder to control something so broad as a fundamental law of [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law October 16, 2012 Patent litigation between Apple and Samsung continues to attract enormous attention, with newspapers, public commentators, industry executives, and investors all struggling to understand not only the cases, but also the bigger picture implications of this much-hyped patent war. Back in July, I sketched some early [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law July 30, 2012 Apple and Samsung have dozens of patent claims pending against one another worldwide, but this week one of the biggest patent trials begins: a case that will be heard in the Northern District of California and could ultimately implicate as many as 27 patents. Here [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 12, 2012 Earlier this year, Yahoo made headlines when it filed a blockbuster patent lawsuit against Facebook. The basics of the case looked promising. Yahoo could credibly cast itself as an Internet pioneer; and the company has a promising portfolio of patents related to online advertising and [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law April 2, 2012 Author and investment advisor James Altucher has been attracting a lot of attention the last few days. On Saturday, he published an article with the headline, “Why Google Might Be Going to $0”; his story is about a new patent lawsuit brought against Google where [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law February 6, 2012 A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the RAND commitment, explaining how technology firms often license patents not by explicitly agreeing as to price, but instead by more vaguely agreeing to license their patents on “reasonable” and “non-discriminatory” terms. As I explained in [...]