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Economics

Boston University School of Law

Copyright

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Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2004

Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …


Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2004

Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon

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This essay, however, does not press any particular agenda; rather, it tries to make our thinking about the topic more flexible. It is my hope that some conduct-specific rule as was adopted in the defamation context will eventually be adopted for intellectual property. Copyright law cannot continue forever closing its eyes and hoping its house will stop being haunted.


Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2003

Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon

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This article makes a simple suggestion. Copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Copyright. When new artists make transformative use of existing works in settings not characterized by pre-use commercial negotiations, copyright should avoid imposing a distorting burden.


Draft Of Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon Mar 1999

Draft Of Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

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Ralph Sharp Brown crossed out the "Junior" that followed his name after his father died. In explanation of the hand-altered stationery, he said (if my recollection holds), "I'm the only one left now." Now, after Ralph's death, there may remain no Ralph Sharp Browns. But there are many law teachers who continue to wage the campaign that Ralph made his life work: to save an interdependent society from unnecessary and stagnating restraints on liberty. In the intellectual property area, Ralph sought to teach us that it can be both right and necessary to give individuals the liberty to "reap without …


New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon Mar 1999

New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

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Here is a ten-page excerpt from! a published piece, followed by some more recent and more random thoughts. Community is not civility. That is, I imagine my ideal community as one where people aren't always sweet to each other; I imagine a community where truth is more important than hurt feelings, and fun is more important than money. I imagine a community of individualists: raucous, iconoclastic. Steve Shiffrin's ROMANCE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT and Ed Baker's work seems to have the kind of community in mind that I am interested in.


Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest--Introduction, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 1999

Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest--Introduction, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Ralph Sharp Brown crossed out the "Junior" that followed his name after his father died. In explanation of the hand-altered stationery, he said (if my recollection holds), "I'm the only one left now." Now, after Ralph's death, there may remain no Ralph Sharp Browns. But there are many law teachers who continue to wage the campaign that Ralph made his life work: to save an interdependent society from unnecessary and stagnating restraints on liberty. In the intellectual property area, Ralph sought to teach us that it can be both right and necessary to give individuals the liberty to "reap without …


Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon Apr 1992

Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

When competitors engage in unrestrained copying of each others' intangible products, the structure can resemble a prisoner's dilemma in which free choice leads to unnecessarily low individual payoffs and low social welfare. There are many ways to avoid these low payoffs, such as contract enforcement, direct regulation of copying behavior through IP, and direct government subsidies. All of these modes alter the payoff pattern away from prisoner's dilemma.

When should lawmakers place copyright law or other IP law among the prime options to consider?

Because copyright, patent, misappropriation and the like all work through private-property markets, one key is to …


Proposed Organization And Detailed Table Of Contents - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon May 1990

Proposed Organization And Detailed Table Of Contents - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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For many years copyright was a backwater of the law. Perceived as an esoteric and narrow field beset by hypertechnical formalities, the discipline and its practitioners were largely isolated from scholarly and case law developments in other areas. There were exceptions of course. Well before the explosion of intellectual property litigation in the last twenty years, persons such as Zcharia Chaffee Jr. and Judge Learned Hand brought a wealth of learning and a broad perspective to copyright.


Draft Of New Versus Old Authors - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon May 1990

Draft Of New Versus Old Authors - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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Virtually all the issues canvassed above embody the tension that exists in seeking to honor the interests of two generations of creators. For example, the essay has discussed the need for new adaptive artists to have a copyright in their own productions and the dangers that the "subconscious copying rule" poses to new creators, particularly in an age of ubiquitous media.