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.
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 below. A timeline of six months is preferred although longer or shorter time periods will be considered. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis and will be selected for funding based on an internal review
process that will include C4IP’s Board Members.
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.
Sample Areas of Interest
We 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
Proposal Format
Proposals should include the information set forth below. The Proposal section should be no
more than five pages, double-spaced, with at least 12-point font. Final application packages
should be submitted in PDF or Word format to [email protected].
- Overview
a. Proposal title
b. Lead researcher’s full name, contact information (postal address, email address, phone), affiliation (university, school, college and/or department)
c. Additional researcher(s), if any, full name, contact information (postal address, email address, phone), affiliation (university, school, college and/or department) - Proposal
a. Overview and research goals
b. Description of the intended research, with a focus on how data and/or empirical
evidence would be developed
c. How this research relates to and builds on other work in the area
d. Plan for dissemination of final research to the public (e.g., publication in a journal, presentation at a conference) - CV(s) (maximum two pages per researcher)
- Timeline
- Budget
Additional Information or Questions
Please contact Jamie Simpson at [email protected]
