Law Review at Washington University in St. Louis

Patents and the First Amendment

Dan L. Burk

Patents are intended as a means of promoting innovation through private pecuniary incentives. But the patent system has for some time been on a collision course with guarantees of expressive freedom. Surprisingly, no one has ever subjected patent doctrine to…

Noncompetes as Tax Evasion

Rebecca N. Morrow

Al Capone famously boasted of his criminal empire: “Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it a business.” Treasury Agent Frank Wilson and Prosecutor George Johnson put Capone behind bars not by disputing his characterization and pursuing…

When Shadow Removals Collide: Searching for Solutions to the Legal Black Holes Created by Expedited Removal and Reinstatement

Jennifer Lee Koh

Immigration scholarship has begun to explore the prominence of shadow removals—deportations that are executed by front-line agency officials acting outside the presence of an immigration judge—which now constitute the majority of all reported removals. This Article explores two of the…

Filling the Jurisprudential Gap: “Regular and Established Place of Business” After In Re Cray, Inc.

David A. Serati

Since the nineteenth century, specific venue rules for patent infringement suits have existed in federal law. The current version of the “Patent Venue Statute” is codified in 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), which provides that “[a]ny civil action for patent infringement…

Protecting the Democratic Role of the Press: A Legal Solution to Fake News

Andrea Butler

It is difficult to discuss the 2016 presidential election without including the impact of fake news in the conversation, and most commentators deplore the effect of fake news’ proliferation across the internet on American politics and the public. These conversations…