Strengthen protection means helping the rights owner---topical affs must make IP easier to acquire, broaden its scope, or provide remedies for infringement.

I constructed a database of every Supreme Court opinion implicating patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret issues from July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2016. The database entries are the Supreme Court’s final decision in each matter; certiorari dispositions are not included. I removed from the database any cases that, though referring to intellectual property law, did not actually decide any intellectual property issue. For example, Illinois Tool Works, Inc. v. Independent Ink, Inc. concerned whether there should be a presumption of market power under antitrust law where the product in question is subject to patent protection.7 Though this case bears a relation to patent protection, its result did not turn on or affect patent law. The final Supreme Court database includes forty-four intellectual property decisions and is summarized in Appendix A. Using similar methods, I developed a database of every federal statute concerning patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret rights during the same time period. As with the Supreme Court data, I removed statutes that did not actually affect patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret doctrine. For example, the Lanham Act is the primary statute providing for Federal trademark protection in the United States.8 Portions of the Lanham Act regulate nontrademark activities, such as false advertising.9 Legislation that affected only the false advertising portions of the Lanham Act was excluded from the database. The final dataset includes forty-three legislative entries for the pertinent period and is summarized in Appendix B.10 The following sections analyze the contours of intellectual property activity in these Supreme Court and congressional datasets.

A. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

The primary variable for analysis is whether a given Supreme Court decision or legislative action strengthened or weakened intellectual property protection. Consistent with prior research in this context, strengthened versus weakened refers to the extent of protection afforded to the intellectual property rights owner.11 Accordingly, Supreme Court decisions that make it easier to acquire intellectual property rights; broaden the scope of intellectual property protection; make it easier to prove infringement; or strengthen remedies for infringement are all considered to strengthen intellectual property protection. Decisions that have the opposite effects weaken protection.12