The Patent Crisis: How the Court Can Solve It (clip courtesy of cce-mcle.com)

"The Patent Crisis: How The Courts Can Solve it," by Mark Lemley, Esq. and Patrick Reilly, Esq. Patent law is crucial to encourage technological innovation. But as the patent system currently stands, diverse industries from pharmaceuticals to software to semiconductors are all governed by the same rules even though they innovate very differently. The result is a crisis in the patent system, where patents calibrated to the needs of prescription drugs wreak havoc on information technologies and vice versa. According to Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley in their book, The Patent Crisis and How Courts Can Solve It, from the University of Chicago Press, courts should use the tools the patent system already gives them to treat patents in different industries differently. Industry tailoring is the only way to provide an appropriate level of incentive for each industry. In this compelling one hour interview with patent attorney Patrick Reilly, Professor Lemley addresses key issues which confront the patent system. Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, and the Director of Stanford's LLM Program in Law, Science and Technology. He teaches intellectual property, computer and Internet law, patent law, and antitrust. He is the author of seven books (most in multiple editions) and 109 articles on these and related subjects, including the two-volume treatise IP and Antitrust. His works have been reprinted throughout the world, and translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Italian. Patrick Reilly is an intellectual property attorney working in the areas of patent law, creative rights management and new media. His law and consulting practices include patent prosecution, intellectual property rights development and business strategy execution. As founder and CEO of the Intellectual Property Society, Patrick produces and hosts events, educational seminars and videoblogs in collaboration with organizations like the the Center for Continuing Education, the High Tech Law Institute of Santa Clara University and Stanford Law School. He specializes in bringing together leading academics, high technology entrepreneurs and creative workers to discuss new and emerging legal issues that are redefining the possibilities and dynamics of world culture. He has taught intellectual property law to federal and state judges at numerous Federal Judicial Center and ABA programs, has testified seven times before Congress and numerous times before the California legislature, the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Modernization Commission on patent, trade secret, antitrust and constitutional law matters, and has filed numerous amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and the federal circuit courts of appeals.