C4IP Grants for Intellectual Property Research, Scholarship and Writings

Purpose

• C4IP is committed to providing data-driven recommendations for intellectual property policy. To that end, C4IP plans to support original, empirically-grounded research through this grant program. While all eligible researchers are encouraged to apply, C4IP welcomes collaboration between legal academia and other areas of social science or economic research and researchers outside of legal academia to apply.

Sample Areas of Interest

They encourage creative applications aimed at providing data or empirical evidence relevant to contemporary IP policy debates. The topics suggested below are examples only and not intended to discourage proposals in other areas of inquiry.

• Impact of the Supreme Court’s patent eligibility decisions on innovation in various industries
• Analysis of the licensing markets for standards-essential patents
• How injunction jurisprudence impacts the U.S. patent system
• Effects of post-grant proceedings on patent litigation
• How the eBay decision on injunctions has affected settlement agreements
• Whether broad patent protection for “pioneering” inventions helps or hurts the creation of a market for that invention
• Comparison of the commercialization of university-originated inventions before and after passage of the Bayh-Dole Act
• Estimates of the amounts of counterfeit goods being sold on “thrift shop” online platforms that host third-party sellers
• Whether the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 has encouraged more reliance on trade secret protection relative to patent protection
• Effects of patents on drug pricing and innovation in standards-based technologies.

Award Information

• C4IP will provide grants of up to $25,000 to support research projects resulting in final written work products. If the final written work product is published, it should note the funding from C4IP. Awards shall be provided to the lead researcher to distribute as appropriate. The funds are not to be used for overhead or indirect costs.
• Proposals should set forth a specific topic for research, should include a proposed budget and timeline for completion following the format provided. A timeline of six months is preferred although longer or shorter time periods will be considered.

Eligibility Criteria

• Awards are open to any full-time assistant, associate, or professor at a university, degree granting research institution, or law school at the time of application submission to act as lead researcher. Additional researchers may hold any of those positions, or be graduate degree, post-doctoral degree, J.D, or LLM candidates.

For more information, visit C4IP.