Patent Licensing and Its Implications for Patent Law and Legal Theory

This doctoral dissertation consists of three law review articles. They are all based on my research on patent licensing during my doctoral studies. The first article examines the calculation of patent royalties and patent damages. The core idea of this article is that courts can mimic the method of calculating royalties in patent licensing contracts to calculate damages for patent infringement. The second article examines the property rights acquired by the licensee from the patentee in a patent licensing contract. This study finds that the licensee often acquires assets from the patentee that contribute to the value of the patented technology. In the contract, this is reflected in the fact that the patentee bundles property rights in other assets with the patent rights and assigns them together to the licensee. The central argument of this paper is that this bundling arrangement is beneficial to innovation. The third article extends the study from the field of patent law to the fields of property law and copyright law. It contrasts voluntary and involuntary transfers of property rights in these three areas. The central argument of the paper is that if the government allows involuntary transfers of property rights, it should treat the legal relationship derived from the involuntary transfer as an “involuntary contract” rather than a legal relationship constructed simply as an exchange between property rights and money.