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Judicial Ideology and IP Cases
At The Patry Copyright Blog, William Patry points to a recently published article, The Effect of Judicial Ideology in Intellectual Property Cases, by two law professors, Matthew J. Sag of DePaul and Tonja Jacobi of Northwestern, and doctoral student Maxim Sytch of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. The three looked at Supreme Court cases decided between 1954 and 2006. In an abstract, they describe what they found:
We show that ideology is a significant determinant of cases involving intellectual property rights. However, our analysis also shows that there are significant differences between intellectual property and other areas of the law with respect to the effect of ideology. This analysis has important implications for the study of intellectual property. It also contributes to the broader judicial ideology literature by demonstrating the effect of ideology in economic cases.
One conclusion that copyright lawyer Patry found of particular interest was that the justices were significantly less likely to vote against the IP owner in copyright cases and significantly more likely to do so in trademark cases.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on October 26, 2007 at 11:24 AM | Permalink
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