Colleen Chien Research Priorities
Colleen V. Chien is Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University Law School. Since the
fall of 2013, she has been serving as White House Senior Advisor Intellectual Property and
Innovation, to the US Chief Technology Officer, at the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy working on a variety of topics including patents and patent reform,
copyrights, trade, innovation and access in public health, international scientific cooperation,
open government data, and educational technology. She is also currently a Senior Visiting
Scholar at Berkeley Law School.
Chien has conducted a variety of empirical studies (surveys, descriptive quantitative analyses,
and regression analyses) of the functioning of the patent system, including on the topics of
patent litigation, “patent assertion entities” (a term she coined), startups and patent demands,
and the International Trade Commission.
She is currently collaborating on a book on the institutions and design of the patent system
with Richard Posner and Bill Landes. More details are described below:
Current Academic Projects
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Rethinking Patent Disclosure: One of the main reasons for having a patent system is
that patents disclose useful technical information that others can learn from. However,
patents aren’t performing this function well. Legal scholars and the courts have
responded with calls to improve the teachings within a patent as the “quid pro quo” for
exclusive rights. The problem with this approach is that it focus on improving the
technical content within the patent, rather than on the broader question of how patent
disclosures truly promote the progress. Through case studies, I describe the ways in
which contextual information – about the patent, about the technology, and about the
owners’ willingness to transact, trade, or give away the patent – can reduce the costs of
technological diffusion and reconcile competing static and dynamic efficiency priorities
within the patent system.
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University Inventions (tent title): (with Ted Sichelman, John Alison, and Michael Risch)
What role is university patenting playing in promoting the progress of the useful arts? In
this empirical project we address this question by exhaustively analyzing the ways in
which university patenting has performed according to a wide variety of metrics and
provide suggestions for policymakers seeking to enhance the impact and efficiency of
university research.
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Redesigning Patent Law (tent title): (with Richard Posner and Bill Landes) This book will
focus on the shifting role of the patent system in the innovation ecosystem and consider
how to optimize it’s functioning within current political and international law
constraints, as well as arguments for more fundamental change. It will draw extensively
upon the existing literature and empirical studies of the patent system, and attempt to
play the translational bridge between these insights and policymaking opportunities.
Rather than focus exclusively on questions of legal doctrine, the traditional focus of the
legal academy, this book will also consider the institutional design, procedure, and
economics of patent law within broader innovation policy. It will be supported by
additional empirical analyses and we plan to release the data behind our analyses to
stimulate further academic thinking and discourse, as well as translational work that can
increase the uptake of academic ideas.
Selected Recent Publications
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Holding Up and Holding Out, 21 Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law
Review ___ (2014)
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The Santa Clara Patent Litigation Survey, with Daniel Dobkin, Wesley Helmholz, Coryn
Millslagle, John Neal, Nicole Shanahan, and Christopher Tosetti, 42 AIPLA Law
Quarterly___ (2014)
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Why Companies and Consumers Are Being Sued for Using Technology and What Can Be
Done, with Edward Reines, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 235 (2014)
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Startups and Patent Trolls, 17 Stanford Technology Law Review 461 (2014)
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Startup Innovation and Patent Assertion, New America Foundation Open Technology
Initiative White Paper, (2013)