Colorado College professor of economics Kristina M. L. Acri just published a new opinion piece in the Denver Post on the 2006 Supreme Court ruling, in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., which has harmed American innovation by undermining small companies and entrepreneurs.
The eBay decision eliminated injunctions – court orders requiring infringers to stop using stolen intellectual property – as the default course of action in the face of proven patent, copyright, or trademark infringement. That case rendered many small inventors defenseless against corporate behemoths that infringed on their products and kept them from creating and marketing next-generation technologies.
Acri concludes by asserting that the long term effects of eBay “demand a thorough reexamination of how we balance innovation protection with fair competition in the 21st century.”