Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 416
Trim: 6 x 9½
978-0-7425-5281-4 • Paperback • August 2007 • $63.00 • (£48.00)
978-1-4616-4557-3 • eBook • August 2007 • $59.50 • (£46.00)
Bruce D. Abramson received his Ph.D. from Columbia and his J.D. from Georgetown. He is the President of Informationism, Inc., a San Francisco-based consultancy that helps an international clientele understand the law, the policies, the economics, and the strategic uses of intellectual property. He has served as a member of the Computer Science faculty at the University of Southern California and as a law clerk at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He is the author of Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again (MIT Press, 2005). His blog, The Informationist, (www.theinformationist.com), contains his musings on IP, tech policy, and numerous other issues.
Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 2 Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Chapter 3 Prologue
Part 4 Part I: The Secret Circuit
Chapter 5 Chapter 1: A Court is Born
Chapter 6 Chapter 2: Conservative Liberalism
Part 7 Part II: The Patent Court
Chapter 8 Chapter 3: From Pilgrims to Progress
Chapter 9 Chapter 4: The Main Tent
Chapter 10 Chapter 5: From Cutting Edge to Front Page
Chapter 11 Chapter 6: Innovation Regulation
Part 12 Part III: Not Just the Patent Court
Chapter 13 Chapter 7: Are We Poor Enough Yet?
Chapter 14 Chapter 8: Looking Forward
Chapter 15 Chapter 9: It's Good to be the Government
Chapter 16 Chapter 10: The Divine Dignity of the Infringer
Part 17 Part IV: The Circuit's Secrets
Chapter 18 Chapter 11: Peripheral Vision
Chapter 19 Chapter 12: Dawn of the Digital Millennium
Chapter 20 Chapter 13: Sherman's March
Chapter 21 Chapter 14: Misuse Abuse
Chapter 22 Chapter 15: The Permanent Experiment
The Federal Circuit—the nation's patent court of appeals—is at center stage of current controversies over U.S. patent law. Bruce Abramson's new book is an authoritative study of the court, remarkable for the lucidity with which it describes highly technical legal and scientific issues, and critical but fair-minded.
— Richard A. Posner, U.S. Circuit Judge
Abramson has produced a provocative look at a Court who's power is far greater than most realize. In doing so, he has brought to life the Federal Circuit's rich history, its jurisprudential successes and failures, and the very real challenges facing what is perhaps the most important legal body in the modern U.S. economy.
— R. Polk Wagner, University of Pennsylvania Law School
..."The Secret Circuit" serves as an excellent primer on the last time the law was revised while also providing some good analysis on the effectiveness of America's patent system in achieving economic growth.
— Joshua Spivak, December 2007
In this remarkable book, Bruce Abramson provides a lively tutorial to our entire legal system, through the lens of a little-known, but highly important court in the United States that determines the validity of patents and regulates international trade. It is a tour de force which should be widely read.
— Robert Litan, Vice President for Research and Policy, Kauffman Foundation, and Senior Fellow in Economic Studies, Brookings Institution