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Generative AI makes it possible to create unlimited amounts of text at essentially zero cost. While this technology has many benefits, it can also be used in ways that undermine the goals of the patent system. This Article identifies policy solutions to address the potentially anti-innovative application of generative AI in several patent-related contexts. First, it examines the use of AI to publish massive online databases of preemptive prior art intended to foreclose patentability. This Article argues that computer-generated invention descriptions published without any substantive nexus to human understanding of their contents should not count as 'printed publications' under US patent law. In addition, this Article considers the use of AI to automate the process of writing and filing enormous numbers of patent applications. It also explores the associated market incentives as well as the potential role of regulatory measures and market forces to provide a corrective effect., TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 376 A. Generative Artificial Intelligence 379 B. The Patent System and AI 382 II. AI-GENERATED PREEMPTIVE PRIOR ART DISCLOSURES 386 A. Motivations and Methods 386 [...]

I. Introduction The legal cannabis industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years as additional states have legalized marijuana for both medical and recreational use, and social acceptance of its [...]

I. INTRODUCTION Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are the various intellectual property (IP) rights that brand owners look to protect to safeguard their brand. Third-party resellers look to exploit price discrimination [...]

Canada has an ambitious plan to reduce the economy's net emissions to zero by 2050. This will require a step change in mitigation action, with deep energy savings and near economy-wide replacement of fossil fuels with clean energy. Achieving this while minimising negative impacts on activity and living standards will be challenging. Canada is already using a range of policy instruments to propel its green transition--including carbon pricing, regulations, investment incentives, and public procurement of green technology. This chapter explores reforms that could make climate policies work better together to lock in both deep emissions reductions and strong economic growth. As with important efforts to prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, Canada's provinces and territories will play a key role in the country's green transition., Canada's climate policy challenge Deep emissions reductions are required for Canada to reach net zero Canada's climate is changing rapidly already. Impacts from rising temperatures and associated extreme weather events [...]

The real-time development of multiple, efficacious vaccines through federal alliances with U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies via Operation Warp Speed during the COVID-19 pandemic is a shining achievement. The health and safety of U.S. residents rely on a national vaccine campaign led by the Biden Administration seeking to rapidly achieve ''herd immunity,' especially among populations in denser, urban environments. Immunizing millions of persons in urban locales is complicated by their vulnerabilities to COVID-19, initial lack of access to vaccines, issues of eligibility, and vaccine hesitancy. This Essay explores these challenges and how they are addressed through legal and policy responses promoting national mass vaccination efforts affecting U.S. urban populations., Introduction 2 I. Pervasive Impacts of COVID-19 Among Urban Populations 5 II. Unique Challenges of Vaccinating Urban Populations 9 III. Public and Private Sector Efforts to Maximize Urban Vaccination Rates [...]

For decades, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a steady flood of press releases announcing False Claims Act (FCA) settlements against health care entities and extolling the purportedly sharp message sent to the industry through these settlements about the consequences of engaging in wrongdoing. The FCA is the primary mechanism for government enforcement against health care entities engaged in wrongdoing, and it is expected to be DOJ's key tool for addressing fraud arising out of government programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. DOJ has pointed to three key goals of its enforcement efforts (deterrence, incentivizing cooperation, and building a culture of compliance in the health care industry). However, careful examination of the settlements touted in those DOJ press releases calls into question whether DOJ's settlement practices are conveying the message DOJ seeks to impart or having the impact it hopes to achieve. Virtually all FCA cases resolve without requiring the defendant to admit wrongdoing, and many defendants issue explicit public denials of wrongdoing when the resolution is announced. The absence of any need to admit wrongdoing has fueled a cost-of-doing-business narrative in which health care entities are required periodically to pay inconsequential settlements to the government regardless of their conduct. DOJ thereby risks both diminishing the general deterrence value of resolutions and lending credence to the vocal skepticism among industry and the defense bar that DOJ could, in fact, prevail at trial. DOJ's willingness to allow settlements in health care fraud cases without admissions is diametrically contrary to DOJ's policy in criminal cases, which is against permitting resolutions without defendants' clear and unequivocal acceptance of responsibility for violating the law. Permitting no-responsibility settlements in the civil FCA context suggests both that DOJ pursues, illegitimately, weak cases it cannot prove at trial, and potentially weakens the general deterrence value of civil FCA claims in general. New defendants may be left with cover that they are not wrongdoers but are merely ensnared in an illegitimate money grab. Even defendants who frankly recognize that they are in violation of the statute may be comforted that they likely face paying little more than restitution, and no significant penalties or social opprobrium. These practices suggest that DOJ rewards willingness to settle, and the monetary recovery it brings, above all other factors. DOJ's focus on settling and monetary recoveries in turn lends credence to the widespread belief that civil health care fraud settlements simply do not signal wrongdoing. There is no law, policy, or practice that prevents DOJ from requiring admissions in FCA settlements. Yet an in-depth review of nearly 200 FCA resolutions involving health care entities over the past two years reveals that approximately 92% did not include defendants' clear acceptance of responsibility, and approximately 37% involved defendants actively denying responsibility. The absence of any DOJ policy favoring admissions has important negative consequences, undermining DOJ's goals of deterrence, incentivizing cooperation, and building a culture of compliance. First, when corporate actors believe DOJ will pursue claims regardless of wrongdoing and the consequences of even a settlement will be relatively painless from a financial and reputational perspective, those actors have reduced incentive to put in place compliance structures dedicated to preventing wrongdoing. second, and perhaps more importantly, when corporate actors diminish the force of settlements with DOJ by denying responsibility, they undermine the system's legitimacy vital for DOJ to encourage cooperation and for the government and well-meaning corporate actors to cultivate an industry-wide culture of compliance. This Article examines DOJ policy both from an economic incentive perspective and in light of research surrounding the psychology of legal authority, concluding that under both lenses DOJ undercuts its own goals. With DOJ actively reforming FCA policy and the FCA poised to take center stage in the government's fight against COVID-19 program abuse, it is beyond time to address this gap in DOJ's enforcement policy., INTRODUCTION I. THE FALSE CLAIMS ACT A. The FCA Is the Government's Primary Health Care Fraud Enforcement Tool B. Background and Structure of the FCA. II. DOJ'S POLICIES AND PRACTICES [...]

At its core, trademark law exists as a tool for consumer protection. Thus, trademark owners use policing and enforcement to maintain a trademark's goodwill, which in turn protects consumers from confusion. But policing and enforcement can lead to trademark overreach and bullying--which undermine the goal of trademark law. This Comment explains that trademark owners are incentivized to engage in aggressive enforcement tactics because courts weigh enforcement efforts in favor of trademark strength. And strong trademarks receive strong protection because such marks are more likely to succeed in trademark infringement litigation. To curb trademark bullying and realign trademark law with its consumer protection purpose, this Comment argues that courts assessing trademark strength should focus on evidence of marketing strategies and consumer perception rather than trademark enforcement., INTRODUCTION At its core, U.S. law viewed trademarks as a consumer protection mechanism. (1) Trademarks allow companies to communicate information to the market, while trademark law prevents other parties 'from [...]

For nearly two hundred years, U.S. copyright law has assumed that owners may voluntarily abandon their rights in a work. But scholars have largely ignored copyright abandonment, and case law on the subject is fragmented and inconsistent. As a result, abandonment remains poorly theorized, owners can avail themselves of no reliable mechanism to abandon their works, and the practice remains rare. This Article seeks to bring copyright abandonment out of the shadows, showing that it is a doctrine rich in conceptual, normative, and practical significance. Unlike abandonment of real and chattel property, which imposes significant public costs in exchange for discrete private benefits, copyright abandonment is potentially costly for rights holders but broadly beneficial for society. Nonetheless, rights holders--ranging from lauded filmmakers and photographers to leading museums and everyday creators--make the counterintuitive choice to abandon valuable works. This Article analyzes two previously untapped resources to better understand copyright abandonment. First, we survey four decades of U.S. Copyright Office records, exposing both the motivations for abandonment and the infrequency of the practice. Second, we examine every state and federal copyright abandonment case, a corpus of nearly three hundred decisions. By distilling this body of law, this Article distinguishes abandonment from a set of related doctrines and reveals the major fault lines in judicial application of the abandonment standard. Finally, we highlight the potential of abandonment to further copyright's constitutional aims by suggesting a series of reforms designed to better align copyright holder incentives with the public good., TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 490 I. CONCEPTUALIZING ABANDONMENT 494 A. Abandoning Property 495 B. Abandoning Copyrights 498 II. THE SOCIAL COSTS OF ABANDONMENT 503 A. The Social Costs of Abandoning [...]

In 1997 the Oklahoma legislature passed the Small Business Incubators Incentives Act in an effort to 'promote, encourage and advance economic prosperity and employment throughout the state by creating a more favorable tax climate for organizations which qualify as sponsors of small business incubators in this state and a more favorable business climate for tenants.' To-date there has been no formal analysis of the aggregate yearly data collected by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce regarding the incubators certified through the program. Utilizing data from 2000 through 2017, this review organizes and analyzes the information to have a picture of the development of Oklahoma's business incubators through the years and to discover what questions and trends might be beneficial and of interest for further investigation., INTRODUCTION Business incubators have become an important ingredient in the economic development and entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world. In 2012 the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA) reported that there were [...]

This paper proposes a new regulatory approach that implements capital requirements contingent on executive incentive schemes. We argue that excessive risk taking in the financial sector originates from the shareholder moral hazard created by government guarantees rather than from corporate governance failures within banks. The idea behind the proposed regulatory approach is thus that the more the compensation structure decouples the interests of bank managers from those of shareholders by curbing risk-taking incentives, the higher the leverage the bank is permitted to take on. Consequently, the risk-shifting incentives caused by government guarantees and the risk-mitigating incentives created by the compensation structure offset each other such that the manager chooses the socially efficient investment policy. History: Accepted by Amit Seru, finance. Funding: C. Eufinger gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Public-Private Sector Research Center of the IESE Business School. The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Research Center SAFE, funded by the State of Hessen initiative for research LOEWE. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2549. Keywords: capital regulation * compensation * leverage * risk, 1. Introduction In response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis that exposed the excessive risk taking of banks, legislators have sought to curb risk-taking incentives in the financial sector. Since the [...]