• The State of Our Patent System Is Stronger​

    It’s not what the Obama administration is saying about patents that counts these days but what it’s not saying. After a State of the Union address that didn’t include patents – and sure, national... Read More

  • Software-Patent Assault Is Assault on All Patents

    First they came for the software patents, and I did not speak out — because I was not a software engineer. Then they came for the university patents, and I did not speak out — because I was not a... Read More

  • Legislating to Fix Patents or to Bury Them?

    The patent debate in Congress is all about the “trolls,” except for when it’s not. That’s one of the contradictions illustrating how much the legislative effort has been uncertain about the... Read More

  • Inside Intel’s Intellectually Dubious Patent Study

    At the heart of policy disputes over standard essential patents is a simple truth: Companies whose products depend on standardized technologies want to increase their profit margins by cutting input... Read More

Recent Posts

What goes up...
Joseph Schuman | October 10, 2014
All the historians, economists and patent-system veterans claiming the surge in patent lawsuits that followed enactment of the American... Read More
FTC Building
Joseph Schuman | September 12, 2014
Nuance is an all-too-frequent casualty of Washington debate, where certainty is held to be a sign of strength and an admitted grasp of fine... Read More
Joseph Schuman / Kirti Gupta | July 24, 2014
A dangerous bias against patents increasingly pervades the conventional wisdom.Case in point, the following Washington Post headline: “... Read More
Read all about it
Joseph Schuman | March 6, 2014
There is an unfortunate susceptibility among journalists to accept all academic studies as if they were peer-reviewed analyses of... Read More
Patent-Bill Rush
Joseph Schuman | January 24, 2014
Hasty lawmaking rarely produces good law and nearly always generates unintended consequences.So stakeholders in the patent system can be... Read More
Joseph Schuman | December 6, 2013
Historians, we hope, may look back on the final debate and passage of the unhelpfully named Innovation Act in the House of Representatives... Read More
Joseph Schuman | November 8, 2013
Sometimes angst is a good thing.Such was the case at the House Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on patent legislation since Chairman Bob... Read More
Joseph Schuman | October 28, 2013
Sometimes, to remember the importance of the patent system, you’ve got to get away from the courts and the Capitol and into the lab where... Read More
Joseph Schuman | October 3, 2013
"I'm the mother of a son with some significant disabilities, and your inventions have had a direct role in his ability to have a higher... Read More
Joseph Schuman | September 20, 2013
A dispute is brewing between the federal judges most experienced in handling patent infringement cases and members of Congress who want to... Read More