September 2018

Except for a few cases, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court docket may not yield much in the way of IP law, Emory Law Professor Tim Holbrook tells the National Law Journal. In last year's Oil States Energy Services LLC v. Greene's Energy Group, LLC, the court explicitly said it wasn't deciding whether other plaintiffs who obtained their patents before the America Invents Act could bring a similar challenge. Holbrook views that as a signal. "I do think that they'll take a retroactivity case because they signaled it so much," he said. "You don't make that statement unless you think it actually needs to be addressed."

A new solar ordinance, created by Emory Law's Turner Environmental Law Clinic, UGA and Georgia Tech was shaped to fit Georgia's particular needs--from its large commercial timber tracts and farm fields to its delicate coastal ecosystem, Energy News Network reports. It's already been adopted by several cities and counties, and more are expected to follow suit. "All of us did this work pro bono," said Clinic Director Mindy Goldstein, "to ensure the process was both neutral, academically rigorous and without bias."

"Entrepreneurship is a journey which involves both discovery and markets," Bernie Carlson writes in Forbes. "The (TI:GER) Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results program creates teams which combine a PhD. scientist or engineer, two MBA students and two law students from Emory University in order to commercialize a new technology."

Professor Fred Smith Jr. serves on the Invest Atlanta Board of Directors, and recently voted "no" on donating $7.5 million to the Georgia Aquarium, which plans an $108 million addition to feature sharks. "If we are going to give $7.5 million of taxpayer money, then the question becomes, "What are we getting that we wouldn't already get?," Smith said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This is going to happen regardless if we put in the $7.5 million, (so) that really doesn't work for me." The motion passed, 4-3.