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Since the publication of our  in the History RePPPeated series, the context for the continued promotion of PPPs has become even more complex and uncertain. In early 2020, the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted how market-based models cannot be relied upon to deliver on human rights such as health, education and water provision, and the fight against inequalities. In 2022, the upsurge in the cost of living, the energy crisis and the climate crisis have further highlighted the failures of the current economic model and the urgent need to build a different one. 

However, calls for an increasing role for the private sector in the financing of infrastructure and public services, and for PPPs in particular, continue to grow. 

PPPs have been essential to vaccine development, especially  with the efforts to create vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Gavi used a  to fund the development of the Ebola vaccine. Other programs include the , launched in 2005, which has relied on partnerships between U.S. government agencies, multilateral organizations, and the local private sector to combat malaria. For example, in Madagascar, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) worked with the American Red Cross and the nongovernmental organization Malaria No More to increase mosquito net access and malaria awareness education campaigns in the region. Similarly, the U.S.  (PEPFAR), created in 2003 under the Bush administration, currently operates in over  and has invested $85 billion to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. PEPFAR  to upgrade medical laboratory infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa and improve logistics to help deliver medicines and sustain numerous other PPPs to maintain epidemic control. Other examples include the , focused on HIV/AIDS relief for women and girls, and the , launched in 2018, that targets AIDS and cervical cancer.Such forms of public sector support were dramatically expanded to fight Covid-19, including the U.S. government’s , instituted to accelerate the development and mass production of Covid-19 vaccines. Its efforts were quantifiably successful: they led to viable vaccines in a dramatically short timespan:  compared to the average of 8–15 years for previous vaccines.These past efforts offer valuable lessons for utilizing PPPs to address pandemics and contribute to existing infrastructure that can be deployed in furtherance of global Covid-19 vaccine supply chains.The private sector is a critical partner in meeting the immense challenge of supplying, distributing, and vaccinating people around the world. Moving supplies of vaccines from the United States and other Western countries will require working closely with multinational freight shippers, including FedEx, UPS, and DHL. This will necessitate coordination at the global level, a role that the U.S. government and its partners should undertake. Once vaccines arrive in-country, efforts will need to shift to the local level, where the U.S. government and its local partners can engage with the private sector in the country to tap into existing distribution networks. Before vaccines can be administered, they must be transported and stored, with some vaccines requiring temperatures . This is especially difficult in contexts where local health systems lack existing storage facilities. Finally, working with local pharmacies and community organizations to provide vaccination centers will continue to be useful in maximizing completed vaccinations from the delivered supply.Once vaccines arrive in-country, efforts will need to shift to the local level, where the U.S. government and its local partners can engage with the private sector in the country to tap into existing distribution networks.The private sector has already played a crucial role in Covid-19 vaccine procurement in many developing countries. For example, mPharma joined a PPP with the Ghanaian government to supply  to Ghana’s population. PPPs have also been formed to increase the manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines. For example, Pfizer and BioNTech SE have  with the U.S. initiative to provide 500 million doses to be donated to developing countries.Development finance institutions are also  and WHO’s COVAX global vaccine alliance to increase the supply of Covid-19 vaccines in low- and medium-income countries. On July 26, 2021, the World Bank and COVAX announced a new  that implements a financing  to allow COVAX to make advance purchases of vaccines from pharmaceutical companies at  prices. Using World Bank funds, COVAX hopes to supply more than  between late 2021 and mid-2022. Additionally, the World Bank signed a $710 million agreement with the South African pharmaceutical company  in early July to allow the company to manufacture more than 500 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccine by late 2022. Nevertheless, supply challenges remain as COVAX  to acquire the vaccines it has organized to distribute through partners. There is still room for the governments and the private sector to improve vaccine procurement and management (e.g., building in-country vaccine manufacturing capacity Private distribution entities have unique capacities to provide cold chain storage for vaccines, including in areas with little infrastructure. There are already innovative private sector-led solutions for storage and transportation challenges. For example,  are using drones to deliver vaccines in Ghana, and several  have made commercial refrigerators available to the national government for vaccine storage. Also, in Nigeria,  have designed an app that assists the Nigerian government in tracking new shipments of the Covid-19 vaccine in the country.Worldwide, PPPs have also helped to establish mass vaccination sites. In the United States, the  allowed 40,000 pharmacies to distribute vaccines by providing them with liability protection under the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. As other countries adopt similar distribution partnerships, this regulatory issue of liability protection is critical for attracting private-sector participation.PPPs should prioritize face-to-face personal delivery of the vaccine, with simultaneous outreach to global corporations, local private institutions, and empowered stakeholders (e.g., pharmacists, chemists, civil society actors). Partnerships will also be essential in leveraging the latest technologies to maximize the scale and reach of supply chains.PPPs have also proven effective in delivery of and education about the Covid-19 vaccination education efforts. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique, , an NGO, has trained local health professionals to properly administer vaccinations.

The international effort to achieve global COVID-19 vaccination goals faces a dilemma. Stakeholders in this space are at odds over how to treat intellectual property (IP) rights now that viable vaccines are on the market but are inaccessible to vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICS). A key aspect of this debate is whether to grant patent waivers for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. We suggest looking beyond patent waivers with an innovative solution based on public-private partnerships (PPPs), an approach that could be more effective in combating the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneously help prepare LMICS for future health crises.

Background

Innovation prizes aren’t hard to come by. Last year Elon Musk announced $100 million to come up with ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The year before, Prince William and David Attenborough announced an annual £1 million Earthshot Prize for solutions to environmental problems. This year, no doubt, will herald another headline-grabbing announcement.

But do such prizes actually work? The lessons from history are far from straightforward, but there are many for would-be creators of modern innovation prizes to learn.

We have examined one of the longest available datasets of awards for innovation to determine whether prizes spurred technological development. We find that prizes induced competitive entry and that the largest effects are for prestigious medals. Consistent with competitive entry, we find important effects of the prizes on counts of quality-adjusted patents, which cannot be explained by technology category substitution. Our quantitative evidence on the utility of prizes is supported qualitatively. The Scientific American remarked of the RASE prize system in 1867: ‘It is indisputable that these

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Session V was moderated by Anne-Laure Fayard from New York University and included opening presentations by James Beck, a Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Challenge winner, David Hertz, a Water Abundance X-Prize winner, and Marybeth Haneline from Nova Labs, Inc. After opening presentations, speakers divided into breakout groups. Breakout Group A was moderated by Jack Hughes from Lewis Bay Holdings, and the speakers included James Beck and David Hertz. Breakout Group B was moderated by Anne-Laure Fayard, and the speakers included Marybeth Haneline, Daryl Peace, and Patrick Thompson, all from Nova Labs, Inc. While the first breakout group focused on two winners of XPRIZEs, specifically focusing on their experiences throughout the prize competition, the second group focused on open competitions conducted by a Washington DC-area “makerspace” (Nova Labs, Inc.) that bring together diverse sets of individuals to develop assistive technologies. This group discussed the ways in which the non-profit assists with open collaboration for “makers.”

BREAKOUT GROUP V-A

Over the past 15 years, China has expanded its once-minimal military presence in the South China Sea into a significant one.

Beijing has laid claim to nearly all of the strategic waterway, a vital shipping lifeline for the global economy that is rich in energy and fishery resources. China has used nonmilitary assets such as its Coast Guard, fishing vessels and maritime militia to bully its neighbors, blockade their ships and build Chinese military bases on disputed islands.

Over the last two years, much has been written about patent trolls, firms that make their money asserting patents against other companies, but do not make a useful product of their own. Both the White House and Congressional leaders have called for patent reform to fix the underlying problems that give rise to patent troll lawsuits. Not so fast, say Stephen Haber and Ross Levine in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (“The Myth of the Wicked Patent Troll”). We shouldn’t reform the patent system, they say, because there is no evidence that trolls are hindering innovation; these calls are being driven just by a few large companies who don’t want to pay inventors. But there is evidence of significant harm. The White House and the Congressional Research Service both cited many research studies suggesting that patent litigation harms innovation. And three new empirical studies provide strong confirmation that patent litigation is reducing venture capital investment in startups and is reducing R&D spending, especially in small firms. Haber and Levine admit that patent litigation is surging. There were six times as many patent lawsuits last year than in the 1980s. The number of firms sued by patent trolls grew nine-fold over the last decade; now a majority of patent lawsuits are filed by trolls. Haber and Levine argue that this is not a problem: “it might instead reflect a healthy, dynamic economy.” They cite papers finding that patent trolls tend to file suits in innovative industries and that during the nineteenth century, new technologies such as the telegraph were sometimes followed by lawsuits. But this does not mean that the explosion in patent litigation is somehow “normal.” It’s true that plaintiffs, including patent trolls, tend to file lawsuits in dynamic, innovative industries. But that’s just because they “follow the money.” Patent trolls tend to sue cash rich companies, and innovative new technologies generate cash. The economic burden of today’s patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. shows that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation over $60 billion in firm wealth each year. While mean damages in a patent lawsuit ran around $50,000 (in today’s dollars) at the time the telegraph, mean damages today about $21 million. Even taking into account the much larger size of the economy today, the economic impact of patent litigation today is an order of magnitude larger than it was in the age of the telegraph. Moreover, these costs fall disproportionately on innovative firms: the more R&D a firm performs, the it is to be sued for patent infringement, all else equal. And, although this fact alone does not prove that this litigation reduces firms’ innovation, other evidence suggests that this is exactly what happens. found, for example, that medical imaging businesses sued by a patent troll reduced revenues and innovations relative to comparable companies that were not sued. But the biggest impact is on small startup firms — contrary to Haber and Levine, most patent trolls target firms selling less than $100 million a year. of software startups found that 41% reported “significant operational impacts” from patent troll lawsuits, causing them to exit business lines or change strategy. of venture capitalists found that 74% had companies that experienced “significant impacts” from patent demands.

More corn is produced than any other grain crop, and for good reason. It is a staple food for many people and helps to feed a growing world population. It's also a major component of livestock feed. According to the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) "World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates" report, nations worldwide are projected to produce 1,225.45 million metric tons of corn for the 2023-2024 season and 1,220.54 million metric tons for the 2024-2025 season. 1 Corn is considered a multipurpose agricultural crop around the globe. It is used in consumer items, industrial products, biofuels, as a sweetener in many processed foods, and it's the main ingredient in corn oil, corn starch, and corn syrup. It's also used to create ethanol fuel, and even the cobs have industrial uses due to their absorbent qualities. Read on for information about the world's major corn-producing nations in the 2022-2023 season. The U.S. is by far the world's largest producer of corn, with a 2022-2023 production of 346.74 million metric tons. The estimate for 2023-2024 is 389.69 million metric tons.2 The acreage dedicated to planting corn changes from season to season, but in all about 90 million acres of American land are planted with corn each production year. While the nation is an of corn, most corn produced is used for domestic consumption as livestock feed and ethanol production. About 12% was exported in the 2022-2023 season.3

A Texas federal judge’s order halting enforcement of the Biden administration’s sweeping ban on noncompete agreements has, at least temporarily, cleared a complex path to safeguarding breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. AI entrepreneurs have turned to trade secrets law and noncompete agreements in recent months to protect their proprietary artificial intelligence systems, and the products of AI-backed discoveries. But that strategy is threatened if the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on most noncompetes is allowed to go into effect, said , partner and general counsel at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP. “That’s why the combination of not being able to use noncompetes and the power of AI—making a research process that might previously taken months or years and collapsing it into hours—will create a real risk for parties who have the trade secrets now,” he said. US District Judge Ada Brown, a Trump appointee, intervened on July 3 to reinforce, for the moment, the and companies’ increasing use of trade secrets to protect their AI tools from theft. The decision came two months before the FTC’s final rule against noncompetes would’ve taken effect, and some five months after the US Patent and Trademark Office indicating AI-created tools can be patented only if a human is significantly involved in development. The flurry of AI innovations has led to a litany of legal battles over tech ownership, especially between startups and big tech companies jostling for talent and their IP while racing to market, said , co-chair of Baker Botts’ artificial intelligence practice team. Trade secret protections and noncompete agreements often go hand in hand. Trade secrets keep corporate IP, like new AI tools, private until a company is ready to publicly disclose their innovation, while noncompete agreements prevent employees from taking those tools with them to new jobs at competitors. And the disputes are already here. In March 2020, Meta Platforms Inc. itself against against claims it misappropriated AI trade secrets after hiring startup Neural Magic Inc.'s technology director who was under noncompete and nondisclosure agreements. Earlier this month, Insight Direct USA Inc. a former senior executive of stealing generative-AI tools and enticing coworkers to join his new startup, Fog Solutions LLC. If an employee with access to trade secrets acts unethically by joining a competitor and offering an AI product without disclosing its origins,"it is a problem that your trade secrets will walk away,” Rich said. Preventing employees from joining competitors is a key strategy to mitigate trade secret theft, Rich noted. He highlighted the risk posed by leveraging “human capital” and reverse engineering to exploit confidential information. “The challenge often lies in detecting when trade secrets walk out the door,” Rich cautioned. Some litigation outcomes may force companies relying on trade secrets to relinquish use of noncompete agreements when employees pursue new professional opportunities. Clear employment agreements are essential to deter litigation over misappropriated trade secrets, said , associate dean at Cornell Tech. He stressed the complexity of distinguishing between an employee’s general skill set and proprietary knowledge. AI startup Neural Magic said it realized Meta after the Facebook parent announced in December 2019 the creation of an open-source product, according to a filed in March 2020 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The startup said its technology director Aleksader Zlateski was under noncompete and nondisclosure agreements but left to work for Meta. Zlateski had access to trade secrets and confidential business plans, according to Neural Magic. It alleged Meta’s open-source product used the same algorithms as Neural Magic’s IP. Meta denied the allegations. The companies notified the court in August 2023 they’d resolved the claims under “confidential terms.” , an associate at Locke Lord LLP emphasized the importance of tailored employment agreements that explicitly define trade secrets, particularly as companies navigate AI tools and the security implications of remote and hybrid work. “With the rise of generative AI, the scope of what constitutes a ‘trade secret’ is likely expanding,” Rutledge added. When it announced its ban on noncompetes, the FTC suggested patents as another pathway companies could use to protect their inventions. It estimated the ban could lead to as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade. But courts and agencies have uniformly said the law requires significant human involvement during the invention or creation process for patent or copyright protection to apply, casting into doubt that avenue to prevent others from appropriating new AI creations. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, has sought protections for AI-generated art and inventions around the world. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2022 in Thaler v. Vidal that patent inventors must be human. The court rejected Thaler’s argument that his AI system could be considered an inventor. Meanwhile, the US Patent and Trademark Office’s February 2024 guidance gives on what amount of input or human involvement is necessary, Rich said. The patent office’s guidance is similar to that issued by the US Copyright Office in March 2023, sufficient human authorship is needed for works created by artificial intelligence to receive protection. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September will hear of the US Copyright Office’s refusal to register his AI-generated artwork of a two-dimensional image of a train track running through an overpass. A district court judge in August 2023 the copyright office’s decision that the work lacked human authorship and therefore isn’t protectable. The allure of trade secrets lies in their ability to protect confidential information without the public disclosure inherent in patent and copyright filings. Moreover, trade secrets law doesn’t require “human authorship” like patents or for the information to be “novel” or have a “creative spark” like copyright, Rutledge said. Companies seeking trade secret protections of AI outputs should demonstrate that the byproduct of AI has been substantively altered to create independent economic value, and that the company has taken steps to protect the information, he said. “This all makes trade secret law a prime candidate to protect information that is derived from AI products,” Rutledge said. “However, no court has yet ruled on whether an AI’s output is sufficiently ‘secret’ to receive trade secret protections.” That fluidity does present a risk, attorneys said. Although trade secret protections may present a temporary remedy to AI’s patentability problem, Rutledge anticipates it will face its own challenges. “We can expect companies who are claiming trade secret protections to have their opponents argue ‘no, this can’t be a trade secret, it is from AI,” Rutledge said. That could result in “a protracted battle and discovery concerning how a company utilizes AI in their workflow, and how they used it in this specific instance.”

The rise of the cloud didn’t free us from concerns over who stores our data. Where matters, and major cloud providers and big data monopolies host a huge percentage of the world’s data. Thousands of organizations that store and manage personal, business and government data use big-name cloud providers. Smartphone platform companies house and process terabytes of the data that flows through mobile networks. Social networks house and control the data on billions of people worldwide — certainly the personal data of effectively all employees in your company.

And, that creates challenges, too. For example, cyber criminals and state-sponsored threat actors find data held in a central hub a tempting target. It’s time for a wider conversation among security specialists and industry leaders about how to better protect this data. Let’s take a look at the risks and challenges of a big data monopoly.

U.S. antitrust enforcers are opening an inquiry into the relationships between leading artificial intelligence startups such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and the tech giants that have invested billions of dollars into them.

The action targets Amazon, Google and Microsoft and their sway over the generative AI boom that’s fueled demand for chatbots such as ChatGPT, and other AI tools that can produce novel imagery and sound.

By creating uncertainty, notice problems can impede effective licensing. For example, uncertainty about ownership, boundaries, and rights-scope can lead parties to assign such different estimates to the value of a license that they are unable to reach agreement.63 Also, uncertainty about rights reduces the value of any license, which reduces the royalty payments that upstream innovators receive and thus dampens incentives to create.64 Licensing, however, plays a much less important role in trademark law because trademark is not about incentivizing innovation.65 To be sure, there are some settings in which trademark licensing is important. The modem franchise arrangement, for example, depends critically on licensing marks.66 But franchising takes place today without any apparent ill effects from notice problems. Also, firms today count on licensing popular brands for use on Tshirts, coffee cups, and other merchandise. 67 But there is no reason to believe that willing licensees have trouble reaching agreement because of uncertainty about the ownership or scope of trademark rights.68 3. Increase in Information Costs When formal notice fails, parties might try to obtain the same information in more costly ways. For example, greater uncertainty about liability might lead prospective trademark users to consult lawyers more often.69 But it is unclear how much this would increase information costs.70 Trademark law is technical enough that a prospective user worried about potential liability and able to afford a lawyer has good reason to seek legal advice entirely apart from any notice problems. Moreover, changes that make the LOC test more certain can produce costs of their own. For example, formulating liability in terms of simple and clear rules improves notice, but it also generates problems of understanding over-inclusion. I shall argue later in this Article that modifying the LOC test is desirable, but not because it reduces information costs. 4.

Increase in Litigation-Related Costs This leaves litigation-related costs. It is important to distinguish between the direct costs of litigation and the indirect costs of litigation threats. Direct costs include the actual costs of litigating and deciding a case. Indirect costs include the social costs created when parties are discouraged by litigation threats from making lawful uses of a work, invention, or mark because of the fear of incurring high direct costs. For example, trademark owners regularly send cease-and-desist letters threatening litigation.7 ' These threats might not have a major impact on large and wealthy companies, but they can intimidate risk averse individuals and small firms. 72 The effectiveness of a litigation threat depends on two variables: (1) the probability that a lawsuit will be filed, survive early dismissal, and proceed far enough into discovery to impose meaningful costs on a defendant, and (2) the magnitude of those costs if this litigation were to occur. As for the first variable, it should be fairly easy in most cases for a trademark owner to allege enough to survive a motion to dismiss and push the suit into discovery, even when the challenged use is perfectly lawful.73 To be sure, litigation is costly for a trademark owner too, but there are reasons why trademark owners would be willing to incur these costs. For one thing, a trademark owner might not know for sure that its lawsuit is meritless, given the uncertainty associated with the LOC test. 74 More importantly, a trademark owner has reason to file even a clearly meritless suit in order to leverage a favorable settlement and bolster a credible threat to sue in the future.75 As a result, someone contemplating use of a mark should anticipate a significant probability of having to litigate at least through the discovery stage if he ignores a cease-and-desist letter.76 The second variable-the magnitude of the litigation costs incurred when a trademark suit survives early dismissal and proceeds to discovery-requires a bit more discussion. There are reasons to expect discovery and summary judgment costs to be quite high in trademark suits. The LOC test places a premium on expensive surveys and expert testimony and creates many opportunities for adversarial litigation.78

As the coronavirus shifted from distant possibility to dire reality in March 2020, chief judges in federal courts nationwide acted quickly to stem its spread. Chief U.S. District Judge James Bredar reluctantly suspended nonemergency hearings and canceled jury trials in Maryland only after its governor announced he was activating the National Guard and closing public schools. At the same time though, Judge Bredar worried his order curtailing court operations would run afoul of criminal defendants' constitutional rights and lead to a caseload clog. "Unquestionably when we come out the other side of this event, dockets will be very crowded, and we will need to make up for lost time," he  in March 2020. Now, with his court having returned to normal operations, Judge Bredar says the backlog was manageable. "It wasn't as though there was a three-year accumulation of cases, because the pandemic was experienced, at least in our court, very much in waves," he recently told Law360. "A backlog still accumulated, just not a terrible one." In fact, Maryland's weighted caseload — a statistic the federal judiciary calculates by analyzing each district's docket for complexity, then dividing the result by the number of allotted judgeships — is lower now than it was before the pandemic. In the year ending on March 31, 2020, there were an average of 426 weighted filings per judgeship. As of March 2023, there were 379. That reflects a nationwide shift. By the end of March, the U.S. average for weighted caseload was the lowest it's been in five years. But even with fewer cases on judges' plates, the pace of justice has slowed. By the end of March, civil litigation lasted nearly three months longer than before the pandemic, marking a 29% increase, and criminal felony case durations spiked 64%, taking more than four months longer to resolve, according to new statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Though the coronavirus public health emergency has ended, its aftershocks are still being felt in federal courts, leaving both litigants and criminal defendants in a holding pattern. Advocates worry access to justice may depend on what year litigation was filed or when a defendant was arrested. It's a phenomenon that defense attorneys like Nellie King have noticed, as criminal clients wait months longer for their day in court amid a "flood and a frenzy to get this backlog cleared." "They're sitting in jail or out on release for extended periods of time," said King, who practices in West Palm Beach, Florida, and serves as president of the . "When we have a presumption of innocence, and you can't clear your name or get back to your family or your work life in a somewhat timely fashion — so that it is not years down the road as far as resolution — then you're just kind of in limbo." A Slowdown In the years leading up to the pandemic, new federal court filings were climbing, with an 18% national uptick between April 2017 and the end of March 2020. Federal prosecutions fell in 2020, as violent crime dropped 22% compared to 2019, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. New civil filings spiked in the first year of the pandemic, driven by a dramatic increase in civil personal injury and product liability filings, which more than doubled thanks to  over allegedly faulty combat earplugs. New filings eased back down the following year and have continued to decline. By March, they'd hit their lowest level since 2017. "Case filings likely decreased during the pandemic because of the perception that courts weren't effectively open for business and that, temporarily at least, it was not an effective way to resolve disputes in an expeditious manner," according to Jim Sandman, the former president of the ., who chaired an  task force formed to handle legal needs arising from COVID-19 as the disease began to spread in the U.S. While attorneys were watching the statute of limitations on time-sensitive cases, they were also putting litigation on hold, according to U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who from 2015 until last June served as chief judge of the District of Minnesota. "I heard from lawyers, 'Well, we're kind of hanging on to a number of cases. Likely we'll file them once the court is open again,'" he said. "Now, we were open the whole time. But we were open electronically, really." Yet the decline in new filings was "masked by the pandemic," according to U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, chief judge of the District of Massachusetts.

"There were delays in resolving civil cases, especially big ones that required a lot of attention," he told Law360. "People couldn't take depositions, or they're taking them by video and they're fighting about that. Everything kind of slipped." That's contributed to an ongoing slowdown, though many federal district courts resumed normal operations a while ago. In the first year of the pandemic, the national average for the duration of a criminal case spiked immediately and has continued to climb over subsequent years. Civil cases, meanwhile, saw a decline in duration over the first year of the pandemic, hit prepandemic levels the following year and, in the 12-month period ending in March, lasted longer than they have in more than two decades. Judge Tunheim attributes both spikes to long stretches where courthouses were largely closed to in-person proceedings. For example, in his district of Minnesota, trials were canceled from March until September 2020, at which point there were a few criminal trials. One, concerning a mosque bombing, faced delays, including a mid-trial continuance when a juror got COVID. After that, he said, he canceled jury trials again until May 2021. "The time it takes to resolve a case really had a lot to do with the pandemic," Judge Tunheim said. "Things just really slowed down, and once they started up again, we went to the oldest cases first. So the newer cases were then taking longer to resolve because we were working on the older cases." Defendants in Limbo Judge Saylor wrestled with his decision to limit court hearings in Massachusetts back in 2020. "It's easy to say everything will be postponed," he told Law360 at the time, "but it's hard to know what to do about that person who is in jail awaiting trial." In the three years since, the wait for a Massachusetts criminal case to be resolved has doubled, from a prepandemic average of just over a year to 25.7 months by the end of March. Before the pandemic, the durations of criminal cases had been modestly decreasing.

The report said virtual hearings are increasing access to justice, but courts still need to modernize to handle digital evidence.

Many courts in the United States are “overburdened and under-resourced,” according to a study released Thursday by the Thomson Reuters Institute.

“The U.S. court system is facing a perfect storm of delays, backlogs and workforce shortages,” according to a  describing the State of the Courts Report 2023 by the Thomson Reuters Institute. The study, , is based on a November 2022 online survey of 201 U.S. judges and court professionals.

Tens of thousands of legal cases ranging from minor thefts to civil disputes to murder are stuck in limbo in state courts around the country, a situation that has left some defendants waiting in jail and strained prosecutors’ and defense attorneys’ ability to do their jobs.

Large cities face some of the steepest challenges. Places like New York, Chicago and San Francisco handle large volumes of cases each year and have seen rates of some violent crimes soar. They have also been home to stringent public health measures that limited court operations.

New migrants pouring into the U.S. after the Biden administration let a COVID-19 restriction called Title 42 expire last week will not break the nation’s stretched court system. The system is already shattered, according to several former judges, immigration experts, and Department of Homeland Security data.  

The average wait time for a “Notice to Appear” before a judge at one of the nation’s 66 immigration courts is now four and a half years. In some cities it is much longer. In New York City, new migrants do not have to appear in court until 2032. This growing backlog creates an incentive for more people to cross the border and request asylum as each new case pushes assigned court dates further into the future. In the meantime, many migrants are permitted to live and work in the United States.  

The United States' patent law system is at the foundation of American global success, found in breakthrough discoveries from Edison to the computer chip to recombinant DNA. Do we really need to "fix" the legal system that has enabled America to become number one in the global biotech, software, hardware, medical devices, energy, genomics, and nanotechnology industries? Patent filings are down an astonishing 40% in 2014 as a result of the first patent troll "fix" a few years ago and recent court decisions that have given away our nation’s competitive edge.

Established giant tech companies, which are wildly profitable and whose market cap comprises most of NASDAQ, are not the source of American innovation. Study after study demonstrates that small university spinouts and venture capital-funded startups are the engine of innovation. Do Oracle , Intel , Google , Apple and Cisco–companies with a combined market cap of over $1.6 trillion–need a bailout to protect them from inventors? Absolutely not

Economists have repeatedly demonstrated that inventors are driven primarily by the expectation of profiting from owning the rights to their inventions. Zorina Khan of Bowdoin College, whose 2005 classic The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development was awarded the prestigious Alice Hanson Jones Prize for outstanding work in economic history, observed that “Ordinary people [are] stimulated by higher perceived returns or demand-side incentives to make long-term commitments to inventive activity.” She also found that “their patterns of patenting were procyclical [and] responded to expected profit opportunities.”

Along with her colleague the late Kenneth Sokoloff of UCLA, Professor Khan then summarized the role of patents in helping U.S. startup businesses grow the economy from an agrarian backwater into the most powerful industrial economy on the face of the earth: