Using judicial opinions from leading casebooks along with numerous hypotheticals and examples, this text illustrates the many challenging issues and innovative trends in patent law today. Sections on basics such as patent law norms, policy, and patent history build the conceptual foundation for explorations of claims, patent prosecution, and complex aspects of patent law. International treaties and conventions that impact innovators, litigators, and policymakers are also covered in this comprehensive text.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In many respects the system has responded with admirable flexibility, but the strain of continual technological change and the greater importance ascribed to patents in a knowledge economy are exposing weaknesses including questionable patent quality, rising transaction costs, impediments to the dissemination of information through patents, and international inconsistencies. A panel including a mix of legal expertise, economists, technologists, and university and corporate officials recommends significant changes in the way the patent system operates. A Patent System for the 21st Century urges creation of a mechanism for post-grant challenges to newly issued patents, reinvigoration of the non-obviousness standard to quality for a patent, strengthening of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, simplified and less costly litigation, harmonization of the U.S., European, and Japanese examination process, and protection of some research from patent infringement liability.

This two volume looseleaf treatise offers procedural guidance to the Patent Act, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Rules, and the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. The work provides substantive analysis of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, new patent interference rules, and the differences between U.S. and foreign patent law.

The authors feel that students considering patent law for the first time should look forward to learning legal tenets as venerable as the Constitution itself yet as current as the latest development from the laboratory bench. This casebook is comparative and constantly refers to aspects of foreign patent systems. This is with the understanding that patent practitioners without an understanding of the international patent system place their clients at a significant disadvantage.