SelectedWorks - Christopher B. Seaman

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Selected Works of Christopher B. Seaman

Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law

Christopher B. Seaman joined the Washington and Lee law faculty in 2012. His research and teaching interests include intellectual property (IP) law, property law, remedies, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on IP litigation and remedies for the violation of IP rights. Professor Seaman’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of law reviews and journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. His empirical study of willful patent infringement was a winner of the 2010 Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize competition for outstanding new scholarship related to patent remedies. In addition, Professor Seaman has written articles on the history, constitutionality, and potential future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

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About Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman joined the Washington and Lee law faculty in 2012. His research and teaching interests include intellectual property (IP) law, property law, remedies, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on IP litigation and remedies for the violation of IP rights. Professor Seaman’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of law reviews and journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. His empirical study of willful patent infringement was a winner of the 2010 Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize competition for outstanding new scholarship related to patent remedies. In addition, Professor Seaman has written articles on the history, constitutionality, and potential future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Present	Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
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Law and Intellectual Property Law

Election Law, Patent Law, IP Litigation, and Civil Procedure

W&L Law Faculty Profile

Sydney Lewis Hall
Washington and Lee University School of Law
Lexington, VA 24450
(540) 458-8520

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Intellectual Property Articles (14)

Beyond Trade Secrecy: Confidentiality Agreements that Act Like Noncompetes (Camilla A. Hrdy and Christopher B. Seaman) Yale Law Journal (2024)

There is a substantial literature on noncompete agreements and their adverse impact on employee mobility and innovation. But a far more common restraint in employment contracts has been underexplored: confidentiality agreements, sometimes called nondisclosure agreements ...

Intellectual Property and Tabletop Games (Christopher B. Seaman and Thuan Tran) Iowa Law Review (2022)

There is a rich body of literature regarding intellectual property’s (“IP”) “negative spaces”—fields where creation and innovation thrive without significant formal protection from IP law. Scholars have written about innovation in diverse fields despite weak ...

Noncompetes and Other Post-Employment Restraints on Competition: Empirical Evidence from Trade Secret Litigation (Christopher B. Seaman) Hastings Law Journal (2021)

Noncompete clauses in employment agreements are both common and controversial. An estimated twenty-eight million Americans—nearly twenty percent of the U.S. workforce—are currently bound by a noncompete. The traditional view that noncompete agreements can facilitate increased ...

An Inside History of the Burger Court's Patent Eligibility Jurisprudence (Christopher B. Seaman and Sheena X. Wang) Akron Law Review (2020)

Patent eligibility is one of the most important and controversial issues in intellectual property law. Although the relevant constitutional and statutory text is extremely broad, the Supreme Court has significantly narrowed the scope of patentable ...

The DTSA at One: An Empirical Study of the First Year of Litigation Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (David S. Levine and Christopher B. Seaman) Wake Forest Law Review (2018)

This article represents the first comprehensive empirical study of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”), the law enacted by Congress in 2016 that created a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The ...

Patent Injunctions on Appeal: An Empirical Study of the Federal Circuit's Application of eBay (Christopher B. Seaman and Ryan T. Holte) Washington Law Review (2017)

More than ten years after the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision in eBay v. MercExchange, the availability of injunctive relief in patent cases remains hotly contested. For example, in a recent decision in the ...

Toward a Federal Jurisprudence of Trade Secret Law (Sharon Sandeen and Christopher B. Seaman) Faculty Scholarship (2017)

The May 2016 enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), which created a new federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation, raises a host of issues that federal courts will ...

Permanent Injunctions in Patent Litigation After eBay: An Empirical Study (Christopher B. Seaman) Iowa Law Review (2016)

The Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay v. MercExchange is widely regarded as one of the most important patent law rulings of the past decade. Historically, patent holders who won on the merits in litigation ...

The Case Against Federalizing Trade Secrecy (Christopher B. Seaman) Virginia Law Review (2015)

Trade secrecy is unique among the major intellectual property (IP) doctrines because it is governed primarily by state law. Recently, however, a number of influential actors — including legislators, academics, and organizations representing IP attorneys ...

Ongoing Royalties in Patent Cases after eBay: An Empirical Assessment and Proposed Framework (Christopher B. Seaman) Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal (2015)

While the Federal Circuit has authorized the award of ongoing royalties as an equitable alternative to a permanent injunction, numerous questions regarding such relief remain unresolved, including when ongoing royalties should be awarded, the structure ...

Standards of Proof in Civil Litigation: An Experiment from Patent Law (David L. Schwartz and Christopher B. Seaman) Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (2013)

Standards of proof are widely assumed to matter in litigation. They operate to allocate the risk of error between litigants, as well as to indicate the relative importance attached to the ultimate decision. But despite ...

Best Mode Trade Secrets (Brian J. Love and Christopher B. Seaman) Yale Journal of Law & Technology (2012)

Trade secrecy and patent rights traditionally have been considered mutually exclusive. Trade secret rights are premised on secrecy. Patent rights, on the other hand, require public disclosure. Absent a sufficiently detailed description of the invention, ...

Willful Patent Infringement and Enhanced Damages After In re Seagate: An Empirical Study (Christopher B. Seaman) Iowa Law Review (2012)

Willful patent infringement is a critical issue in patent litigation, as it can result in an award of up to treble (enhanced) damages. In a 2007 decision, In re Seagate, the Federal Circuit significantly altered ...

Reconsidering the Georgia-Pacific Standard for Reasonable Royalty Patent Damages (Christopher B. Seaman) Brigham Young University Law Review (2010)

Determining damages for infringement is one of the most important—and controversial—issues in current patent litigation. The current fifteen-factor Georgia-Pacific standard for determining a reasonable royalty has become increasingly difficult for juries to apply in patent ...

Voting Rights/Election Law Articles (2)

An Uncertain Future for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act: The Need for a Revised Bailout System (Christopher B. Seaman) (2010)

In Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder ("NAMUDNO"), 129 S. Ct. 2504 (2009), the Supreme Court declined to decide one of the 2008 Term's most prominent issues: the constitutionality of the 2006 ...

The End of Preclearance As We Knew It: How the Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (Peyton McCrary, Christopher B. Seaman and Richard Valelly) Michigan Journal of Race & Law (2006)

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to obtain “preclearance” of proposed electoral changes from the United States Department of Justice or a three-judge ...

Empirical Studies Relating to Patents - Presumption of Validity, in Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law - Vol. II: Analytical Methods (Peter Menell et al. eds., 2019) (Christopher B. Seaman) Books and Chapters (2019)

Both law and economics and intellectual property law have expanded dramatically in tandem over recent decades. This field-defining two-volume Handbook, featuring the leading legal, empirical, and law and economics scholars studying intellectual property rights, provides ...

Enhanced Damages, Litigation Cost Recovery, and Interest, in Patent Remedies and Complex Products: Toward a Global Consensus (Brad Biddle et al. eds., 2019) (Christopher B. Seaman, Colleen V. Chien, Jorge L. Contreras, et al.) Books and Chapters (2019)

Through a collaboration among twenty legal scholars from eleven countries in North America, Europe and Asia, Patent Remedies and Complex Products presents an international consensus on the use of patent remedies for complex products such ...

Lost Profits and Disgorgement, in Patent Remedies and Complex Products: Toward a Global Consensus (Brad Biddle et al. eds., 2019) (Christopher B. Seaman, Thomas F. Cotter, Brian J. Love, et al.) Books and Chapters (2019)

Through a collaboration among twenty legal scholars from eleven countries in North America, Europe and Asia, Patent Remedies and Complex Products presents an international consensus on the use of patent remedies for complex products such ...

The Law of Preclearance: Enforcing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, in The Future of the Voting Rights Act (David L. Epstein et al. eds., 2006) (J. Peyton McCrary, Christopher B. Seaman and Richard M. Valelly) Books and Chapters (2006)

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) stands among the great achievements of American democracy. Originally adopted in 1965, the Act extended full political citizenship to African-American voters in the United States nearly 100 years after the ...

Comments, Responses, and Shorter Works (6)

Patent Eligibility and Cancer Therapy (Christopher B. Seaman) Washington and Lee Law Review (2022)

As an empirical legal scholar, I am pleased to report that Sasha Hoyt has done what very few law students—and even many law professors—could achieve. She successfully conducted a novel empirical study to assess the ...

Reconciling the Lanham Act and the FDCA: A Comment on Chris Hurley’s Note (Christopher B. Seaman) Washington and Lee Law Review (2018)

Tribute to Professor Sally Wiant (Laura N. Gasaway, James Heller, Ann MacLean Massie, et al.) Washington and Lee Law Review (2017)

Introduction: The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2015 (Christopher B. Seaman) Washington and Lee Law Review Online (2015)

This is an introduction to a Roundtable on the Defend Trade Secrets Act published by the Washington and Lee Law Review Online in 2015.

Comment on “Groove is in the Hart”: A Workable Solution for Applying the Right of Publicity to Video Games (Christopher B. Seaman) Washington and Lee Law Review (2015)