On Sept. 25, the Boyd School of Law was featured on FOX5 KVVU-TV for co-hosting, with the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, Water Law in the West: A Panel Discussion with Patricia Mulroy.
The FOX5 story, Exiting water chief declares Lake Mead emergency, is available here.
The event, which drew some 150 people, featured Patricia Mulroy, General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority; Jeffrey Kightlinger, General Manager of The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; and Michele Straube, Director of the Wallace Stegner Center Environmental Dispute Resolution Program of The University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law.
The panel discussion focused on the challenges, obstacles and opportunities that will determine the fate of the Colorado River.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Dean Dan Hamilton Featured on KNPR
Dan Hamilton is the Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law.On Sept. 24, he was featured on KNPR's State of Nevada segment Boyd Law School Has A New Dean.
"We fared relatively well. Thanks to Dick Morgan, thanks to John White, thanks to Nancy Rapoport, we are on a great track and headed in the right direction. And we have several comparative advantages. We are the law school for the whole state, and we are able to keep our price competitive compared to our rivals and our competitors. We are very aggressive about placement, and we work with partners in the city and state to place our graduates, so our placement rate has remained strong. We are all struggling for jobs for our graduates, but our placement rate has remained strong. Our tuition has remained competitive. We have a terrific faculty and alumni base that does continue to draw people to the law school," he said during the interview.
Dean Hamilton researches and writes primarily on American property ideology and the legal and constitutional issues raised by the Civil War. He has written numerous articles and reviews on American legal history.
Student Bryn Esplin Featured in Las Vegas Review-Journal
On Sept. 23, she was featured in the Las Vegas Review-Journal article Brain center's internships offer insights into patients' needs.
Bryn is one of the first law students to be selected for an internship at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. She is also President of Boyd's Health Law Society, which is advised by Professor Stacey Tovino.
"I'm very interested in ethics and how the law interacts with health issues. It's an area that needs to be further explored," Bryn said in the article.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Patent Litigation in Nevada (Part 1)
By Marketa Trimble, Associate Professor of Law
In two recent blog posts I discussed patenting in Nevada – trends in the numbers of patents granted for inventions by Nevada inventors or by Nevada assignees (see here and here). In this and upcoming posts I will provide data on patent litigation in Nevada.
Figure 1 shows the numbers of all patent cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in 2000-2012. In this period the numbers of patent cases filed each year oscillated between 15 cases (filed in 2000) and 35 cases (filed in 2006). In 2012, 32 patent cases were filed in the Court.
The development in Nevada was spared the extreme spike in the numbers of cases that the U.S. patent litigation landscape experienced in 2012 when 5,421 patent cases were filed in all U.S. federal district courts. Figure 2 illustrates the sudden increase in the number of U.S. patent cases, which climbed in the past three years from 2,711 in 2010 and 3,533 in 2011 to 5,421 in 2012.
The spike in the number of patent cases filed in the United States in 2012 has been blamed on the activity of “patent trolls” – entities, also called “non-practicing entities” or “patent assertion entities,” that use questionable practices to enforce patents that they often did not obtain on their own inventions or their employees’ inventions but that the entities purchased from third parties. Some sources estimate that “patent trolls” filed as many as 62% of all patent cases in the United States in 2012 (see here). While the term “patent troll” has been used for several years, the phenomenon of entities accumulating patents on inventions invented by others and engaging in questionable enforcement practices has existed for decades. However, the prominence of “patent troll”-filed lawsuits in 2012 was unprecedented and generated a wave of intense interest in the problem among academics, research institutions, industry groups, Congress, and the White House (see, e.g., an article about the “anti-patent troll” bills before Congress here, a June 2013 White House report here, and an August 2013 CRS Report here).
It is difficult to create precise statistics on “patent troll” activities because opinions tend to differ about which persons and entities should be labeled as “patent trolls.” Based on the opinions of various commentators about the nature of the activities of some of the plaintiffs filing patent suits in Nevada, Nevada has also been affected by “patent troll” activity; however, the effects in Nevada appear to be less severe than in the United States overall. In 2012, the year which has been considered so far as the peak of “patent troll” activity in the United States, four out of the 32 patent cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada were filed by entities that have been referred to by some commentators as “patent trolls.” In 2011, out of a total of 30 cases, five cases were filed in Nevada by entities referred to by some commentators as “patent trolls.” Of course, these numbers are only estimates; as has been pointed out, disagreements exist as to when the designation of “patent troll” is warranted.
The statistics for this post were derived from data provided by LexMachina, Inc.
Figure 1 shows the numbers of all patent cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in 2000-2012. In this period the numbers of patent cases filed each year oscillated between 15 cases (filed in 2000) and 35 cases (filed in 2006). In 2012, 32 patent cases were filed in the Court.
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| Click on the charts to view larger versions. |
The spike in the number of patent cases filed in the United States in 2012 has been blamed on the activity of “patent trolls” – entities, also called “non-practicing entities” or “patent assertion entities,” that use questionable practices to enforce patents that they often did not obtain on their own inventions or their employees’ inventions but that the entities purchased from third parties. Some sources estimate that “patent trolls” filed as many as 62% of all patent cases in the United States in 2012 (see here). While the term “patent troll” has been used for several years, the phenomenon of entities accumulating patents on inventions invented by others and engaging in questionable enforcement practices has existed for decades. However, the prominence of “patent troll”-filed lawsuits in 2012 was unprecedented and generated a wave of intense interest in the problem among academics, research institutions, industry groups, Congress, and the White House (see, e.g., an article about the “anti-patent troll” bills before Congress here, a June 2013 White House report here, and an August 2013 CRS Report here).
It is difficult to create precise statistics on “patent troll” activities because opinions tend to differ about which persons and entities should be labeled as “patent trolls.” Based on the opinions of various commentators about the nature of the activities of some of the plaintiffs filing patent suits in Nevada, Nevada has also been affected by “patent troll” activity; however, the effects in Nevada appear to be less severe than in the United States overall. In 2012, the year which has been considered so far as the peak of “patent troll” activity in the United States, four out of the 32 patent cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada were filed by entities that have been referred to by some commentators as “patent trolls.” In 2011, out of a total of 30 cases, five cases were filed in Nevada by entities referred to by some commentators as “patent trolls.” Of course, these numbers are only estimates; as has been pointed out, disagreements exist as to when the designation of “patent troll” is warranted.
The statistics for this post were derived from data provided by LexMachina, Inc.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Professor Eric Franklin Featured on UNLV News Center
On Sept. 23, he was featured on the UNLV News Center in an article titled New Faces: Eric Franklin. The article is part of a UNLV News Center series that features new faculty and staff at the University.
"I am most excited to inspire Boyd graduates to affect positive change in the city. Las Vegas, in many ways, is at a critical juncture. We are in the midst of a nascent economic recovery, accompanied by a transformation of the downtown, and the rise in housing prices. It is important to ensure that this recovery is enjoyed by all Las Vegans, regardless of socio-economic status," Professor Franklin said in his profile.
The Community Economic Development Clinic, which launches in the fall of 2014, will represent nonprofits, small businesses, and community-based associations on transactional matters.
Professor Sylvia Lazos Provides Commentary on KNPR's State of Nevada
Sylvia Lazos is the Justice Myron Leavitt Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law.On September 23, during KNPR's State of Nevada segment titled What's On Your Mind?, she and Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Glenn Cook provided commentary about general issues on listeners' minds.
"One of my concerns right now is we need to be having an ongoing conversation about education issues during the interim, not just during legislative session. Legislative session is insane in terms of how many issues we have to deal with seriously in just four or five months, and it's very difficult to be extremely thoughtful when everything is being thrown at you. So we really as a community have to be thinking about these issues during the interim," she said.
Professor Lazos is a frequent op-ed contributor, and her expertise is sought by print and broadcast media on a wide range of subjects, including higher education, immigration, race relations, government, voting and initiatives.
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