A Patent Lie
By Paul Goldstein
Doubleday/$24.95
So you thought patent law was dull. Paul Goldstein is back to prove you wrong with his new thriller, “A Patent Lie,” just out this month. The sequel to his 2006 novel, “Errors and Omissions,” continues with the saga of IP litigator Michael Seeley. This time his bumbling brother, a doctor and wannabe Palo Alto patriarch, needs him to come help fight the good fight, pro bono of course, against big pharma.
An AIDS vaccine is at the heart of a patent dispute between his brother’s upstart biotech firm and a multinational drug conglomerate called St. Gall. The untimely, suspicious suicide of the lead attorney brings Seeley from his comfortable private practice in Buffalo, N.Y., to the Bay Area biotech scene.
Just like a real-life lawyer, Seeley is reviewing depositions and working late, but even before he has time to smell the coffee on Nob Hill, he uncovers a plot that will keep you guessing until the end.
Goldstein, who has written numerous intellectual property and copyright textbooks, is a Stanford law professor and of counsel at Morrison & Foerster.
While “A Patent Lie” isn’t a Clancy-esque thrill ride, it certainly makes for some interesting patent law fiction, as strange as that might sound.
— Jason Doiy
Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: Tales of the First Amendment
By Anthony Lewis
Basic Books/$25
Anthony Lewis has always had an enthusiastic admiration for the American judiciary. For Lewis, whose 1964 bestseller “Gideon’s Trumpet” about a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case set the legal journalism standard for many, “bold judicial decisions have made [the United States] what it is.”
But be forewarned: “Freedom for the Thought that We Hate” is not the thorough examination of First Amendment history that you might expect. Instead, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime columnist for The New York Times examines a smattering of American historical events — from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Espionage Act of 1917 to McCarthyism — through a judicial lens, describing the evolution of American judges’ interpretation of freedom of expression
While Lewis is an unabashed supporter of judicial activism — indeed, those wary of the doctrine might consider “Freedom” a collection of horror stories — he also remains far from a free press absolutist. Surprisingly for a journalist, Lewis is distrustful of unlimited media expression. He tells the cautionary tale of Wen Ho Lee, the American scientist the government charged with espionage in 1999 and the press publicly convicted before most charges were dropped. (The feds and five major news organizations later settled with Lee for over $1.5 million.)
Had a federal shield law been in place, Lewis says, “journalists who wrote the damaging stories would have had their subpoenas dismissed, and without the names of the leakers Lee would probably have had to give up his lawsuit. Is that what a decent society would want?” Probably not.
The book’s overarching theme — and indeed its very title — derives from a 1929 dissenting opinion defending a pacifist’s free speech rights in U.S. v. Schwimmer, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of thought,” wrote Justice Holmes. “Not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
That notion, says Lewis, is something both liberals and conservatives seem willing to put their arms around.
— The American Lawyer
