On the Intellectual Property Rights of Academic Inventors
ABSTRACT
Academic and individual inventors face many challenges in asserting their patent rights. Not only are patent litigations very costly and generally unaffordable for those unaffiliated with corporations, but courts in the US and other Western countries are more inclined to side with corporations than with small businesses or academic inventors. Some of the challenges the author, an academic inventor, faced in asserting her patent rights were previously described. Those challenges ended in one US patent getting reissued, and the most economically viable embodiment of another US patent was “dedicated to the public” by the US courts. The courts can easily manipulate the outcomes of patent litigations in favor of corporations and against individual inventors. This article shows how court manipulations can affect patent litigations in the UK and the US.