Volume 2014, No. 4

Articles Policing the Line: International Law, Article III, and the Constitutional Limits of Military Jurisdiction By Jonathan Hafetz This Article addresses an important but undertheorized question in existing jurisprudence and scholarship: the proper role of …

Volume 2014, No. 3

Articles Presidential Government and the Law of Property By Seth Davis This Article introduces a phenomenon that has been overlooked in the literature on property lawmaking: presidential governance of property law. On the conventional account, …

Volume 2014, No. 2

Symposium Issue — Safety and Sustainability in the Era of Food Systems: Reaching a More Integrated Approach The Specter of Productivism and Food Democracy By Olivier De Schutter The productivist paradigm we have inherited from fifty …

Volume 2014, No. 1

Thomas E. Fairchild Lecture: The War on Drugs By The Honorable William J. Bauer I was addicted to one drug and it was nicotine. From the time I was fourteen until I was fifty-something, I …

Volume 2013, No. 6

  Tribute Stewart Macaulay: A Few Personal Reflections By Elizabeth Warren Stewart Macaulay has influenced legions of scholars. I count myself among their fortunate ranks. Book Review On the Empirical and the Lyrical: Review of …

Volume 2013, No. 5

Articles Congressional Gridlock’s Threat to Separation of Powers By Michael J. Teter The principle of separation of powers serves as the foundation of our constitutional system. Though the doctrine’s meaning is somewhat amorphous, at its …

Reforming Software Claiming

Shubha Ghosh

This is Professor Ghosh’s reply to Mark A. Lemley’s article, Software Patents and the Return of Functional Claiming, 2013 Wis. L. Rev. 905.

The subject of Professor Lemley’s article, software patents, is timely and of social relevance. Software is everywhere, serving as tools to control and direct the flow of information and as modern-day gears and pulleys to operate everyday consumer products. As a critical input to many aspects of our contemporary life, the ability of a company to exclude others from software raises questions about the competitiveness and innovativeness of many industries. Since the 1960s, software patents have been a source of suspicion among those who want to keep software out of the clutches of big business.

Professor Shubha Ghosh is the Vilas Research Fellow & Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Volume 2013, No. 4

Articles Software Patents and the Return of Functional Claiming By Mark A. Lemley Commentators have observed for years that patents do less good and cause more harm in the software industry than in other industries …