We introduce and describe the Patent Similarity Dataset, comprising vector space model‐based similarity scores for U.S. utility patents. The dataset provides approximately 640 million pre‐calculated similarity scores, as well as the code and computed vectors required to calculate further pairwise similarities. In addition to the raw data, we introduce measures that leverage patent similarity to provide insight into innovation and intellectual property law issues of interest to both scholars and policymakers. Code is provided in accompanying scripts to assist researchers in obtaining the dataset, joining it with other available patent data, and using it in their research.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper analyzes court priority queuing behavior by examining the time lapse between when a case enters a court's docket and when it is ultimately disposed of. Using data from the Supreme courts of the United States, Massachusetts, and Canada we show that each court's docket features a slow decay with a decreasing tail. This demonstrates that, in each of the courts examined, the vast majority of cases are resolved relatively quickly, while there remains a small number of outlier cases that take an extremely long time to resolve. We discuss the implications for this on legal systems, the study of the law, and future research.

Legal technological developments have been both lauded as the promising future of the law and derided as a danger to the fundamentals of justice. This article helps reconcile these divergent perspectives by providing a definition of legal technology and a framework through which to understand its different types and their potential implications for the legal system and society more generally. Mapping technologies according to how specifically they afford legal uses, and the directness with which they engage in unmediated legal activities reveals different technological categories and their differing propensities to have legal, functional or general implications. This framework can help inform discussions both about which types of legal technologies to be excited about, and which to be concerned about, while also helping guide research, policymaking, design and adoption considerations.