Comparative Patent Remedies: A Legal and Economic Analysis

Nations throughout the world receive more patent applications, grant more patents, and entertain more patent infringement lawsuits than ever before. To understand the contemporary patent system, it is crucial to become familiar with how courts and other actors in different countries enable patent owners to enforce their rights. This is increasingly important, not only for firms that seek to market their products worldwide and for the lawyers who provide them with counsel, but also for scholars and policymakers working to develop better policies for promoting the innovation that drives long-term economic growth.

Comparative Patent Remedies provides a critical and comparative analysis of patent enforcement in the United States and other major patent systems, including the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and India. Thomas Cotter shows how different countries respond to similar issues, and suggests how economic analysis can assist in adapting current practice to the needs of the modern world. Among the topics addressed are: how courts in various nations award monetary compensation for patent infringement, including lost profits, infringer's profits, and reasonable royalties; the conditions under which patent owners may obtain preliminary and permanent injunctions, including cross-border injunctions in the European Union; the availability of various options for potential defendants to challenge patent validity; and other matters, such as the availability of criminal enforcement and border measures to exclude infringing goods.

Thomas F. Cotter is the Briggs and Morgan Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, which he joined in 2006. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, he clerked for the Honorable Lawrence W. Pierce, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, from 1987-88. He practiced law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City from 1988-90, and at Jenner & Block in Chicago from 1990-94. From 1994-2005, he taught at the University of Florida College of Law, where he held a University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship and directed the school's Intellectual Property Law Program. From 2005-06, he was a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is the co-author, with Roger Blair, of Intellectual Property: Economic and Legal Dimensions of Rights and Remedies (2005).