Beauchamp to Lecture on "the First Patent Litigation Explosion"

Christopher Beauchamp, Brooklyn Law School, will deliver The First Patent Litigation Explosion, the Fall 2015 Lecture of the Federal Circuit Historical Society, on Thursday, November 12, 2015, at 2:00 pm at the Dolley Madison House.  The Society writes:

The twenty-first century has witnessed a “patent litigation explosion” of reportedly unprecedented size. It is not unprecedented. In fact, the nineteenth century saw an even bigger surge of patent litigation. In that era, the most prolific patent enforcers brought hundreds or even thousands of suits, dwarfing the efforts of the leading “trolls” today.

Drawing on new data from the archives of two leading federal courts, Professor Beauchamp will describe the rise of large-scale patent enforcement in the middle of the nineteenth century and will outline the scale, composition, and leading causes of that litigation boom. He will then explore the political backlash, at the height of that boom, that threatened to sweep away the patent system as we know it.

Professor Beauchamp is the author of Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America (Harvard University Press, 2015).