Legal literature

From: Ebert Lawrence
To: velvel@mslaw.edu
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 9:26 PM

Have enjoyed your posts on the Tribe business.
Although plagiarism is a significant problem, it might seem the publication of falsities in law reviews is something that should also be discouraged.
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Although many academic commentators have been quick to criticize failings at the Patent Office, they are glacial in responding to errors that they make. The non-discussion of these errors allows the errors to become imbedded as virtual folklore and thereby serve as an impediment to valid academic debate. An article in the Harvard Law Review in 2003 asserted that the patent grant rate at the USPTO was 97% ! [116 Harvard Law Review 2164 (2003), as discussed in Lawrence B. Ebert, Good Night, Gracie?, Intellectual Property Today, pp. 26-27 (August 2003)] A different example of this problem is a misstatement in the Boston University Law Review about the work of Robert Clarke in evaluating the patent grant rate issue (Mark A. Lemley and Kimberley L. Moore, Ending Abuse of Patent Continuations, 84 B. U. L. Rev. 63 (2004) at footnote 22); the mistake of Lemley and Moore is discussed in http://jip.kentlaw.edu/art/volume%204/4-1-4.htm.

If articles in law reviews are to serve as a resource of information, it is time that editors carefully review the accuracy of submissions in the first place and that the law reviews promptly correct errors in the second place.
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Lawrence B. Ebert
October 28