At the 10th Annual Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, hosted by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the UC Berkeley School of Law on August 12 and 13, Elon Law professor David Levine argued against a provision of the Patent Reform Act of 2010 on grounds that it would unjustifiably amplify the power of trade secrecy.
Levine’s paper presented at the conference, Channeling Best Mode’s Barrier to Trade Secrecy, makes the case that the legislation’s proposed elimination of the “best mode” written disclosure for practicing an invention as a “basis on which any claim of a patent may be canceled or held invalid or otherwise unenforceable” would result in a loss of disclosure to the public and an increase in the power of trade secrecy, while only marginally increasing the number of patents held enforceable.
Levine concludes that the reduction in transparency resulting from the legislative provision “is too large a price to pay for a minor and arguable benefit.”
The 10th Annual Intellectual Property Scholars Conference was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, Berkeley Law School; the Intellectual Property Program, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University; the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology, DePaul University College of Law; and the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, Stanford Law School.
The conference brings together intellectual property scholars annually to present their works-in-progress and to listen and discuss others’ works. Click here for details.
Click here for more information about David Levine.