Digital Commons Network^™

Trust: A Model For Disclosure In Patent Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

How to draw the line between public and private is a foundational, first-principles question of privacy law, but the answer has implications for intellectual property, as well. This project is the first in a series of papers about first-person disclosures of information in the privacy and intellectual property law contexts, and it defines the boundary between public and non-public information through the lens of social science — namely, principles of trust.

Patent law’s “public use” bar confronts the question of whether legal protection should extend to information previously disclosed to a small group of people. I present evidence that shows …

Trademark Law And The Social Construction Of Trust: Creating The Legal Framework For Online Identity, Beth Simone Noveck

Articles & Chapters

Trust is the foundation of society for without trust, we cannot

cooperate. Trust, in turn, depends upon secure, reliable, and persistent

identity. Cyberspace is thought to challenge our ability to build trust

because the medium undermines the connection between online

pseudonym and offline identity. We have no assurances of who stands

behind an online avatar; it may be one person, it may be more, it may be a

computer. The legal debate to date has focused exclusively on the question

of how to maintain real world identity in cyberspace. But new "social

software" technology that enables communities from eBay to …