Law Commons^™

Regulating Secrecy, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Washington Law Review

Inventors face a stark choice between two intellectual property systems of protecting innovative ideas: patents and trade secrecy. But accounts of this choice underexplore the role of the regulators that dominate some areas of innovation. Regulation interacts with intellectual property exclusivity in socially problematic ways by encouraging secrecy at the expense of innovation, efficiency, and competition. This Article theorizes how regulation empowers intellectual property generally, explains why this strengthening is problematic for trade secrecy but not for patents, and offers the solution of regulator-enforced disclosure. When a regulator defines a product or a process, it becomes much harder to successfully …

The Influence Of Special Interest Groups On Copyright Law And Policy—A Comparison Of The Legislative Processes In The United States And Switzerland, Michael P. Kunz

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In April 2016, the Office of the United States Trade Representative placed Switzerland on the Watch List of its 2016 Special 301 Report, which contains an annual review of the state of intellectual property rights protection and enforcement in U.S. trading partners around the world. According to the Report, the decision to put Switzerland on the Watch List was premised on U.S. concerns regarding specific difficulties in Switzerland’s system of online copyright protection and enforcement, particularly the “Logistep” ruling issued by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland in 2010. Although the Swiss authorities have acknowledged the difficulties mentioned in the …

General Public License Version 2: The Risk Of Direct Patent Infringement, Chike Eze

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The GNU General Public License Version 2 (“GPLv2”) is a popular license for open source software. Despite its importance, only a few GPLv2 cases have been litigated in the courts. In these litigated cases, the plaintiffs claimed breach of contract or copyright infringement against defendants. However, in XimpleWare v. Ameriprise, the plaintiff explored a novel patent-related avenue for open source software authors to attack vendors and customers of open source software. Specifically, XimpleWare alleged direct patent infringement against Versaware, a software vendor, and Ameriprise, Versaware’s customer, for distributing XimpleWare’s GPLv2-licensed software in violation of GPLv2’s copyleft provisions in section …

Sugar High, Andrew H. Fuller

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Edible marijuana products in commercial marijuana markets, or “edibles,” pose a new challenge to our existing regulatory infrastructure. Marijuana has acquired increasing social and legal acceptance as a form of treatment for a variety of serious illnesses; as such, some states have been challenged to balance the availability and affordability of these treatments with the risk they pose in terms of consumer confusion. Edibles that take the shape of traditional retail candies offer the greatest risk of consumer confusion, especially to children. Consequently, this Article proposes that courts—or, alternately, legislators—should interpret and apply the Lanham Act in a way that …

Supreme People's Court Annual Report On Intellectual Property Cases (2015) (China), Xiaohan Lou, Mingyuan Song, Chao Yu

Washington International Law Journal

The Supreme People’s Court of China began publishing its Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases in 2008. The annual reports, published in April each year, summarize and review new intellectual property cases. This translation includes all 32 cases and 38 legal issues of the 2015 Annual Report. It addresses various areas of law related to intellectual property, including patent law, trademark law, copyright law, unfair competition law, antitrust law, new plant product patent law, and laws related to procedural and evidentiary issues in intellectual property cases. While China is not a common law country, these cases serve as guidelines for …

End Of The Parallel Between Patent Law's § 284 Willfullness And § 285 Exceptional Case Analysis, Don Zhe Nan Wang

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Patent law’s “willful infringement” analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 284 and the “exceptional case” analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 285 are largely considered parallel, and essentially identical. In 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States drastically changed the standards for the § 285 exceptional case analysis in its Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. and Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Management System, Inc. decisions. This prompted two federal circuit judges to call for similar changes to the § 284 willful infringement analysis. On October 19, 2015, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review whether such a …

Branding Taxation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

Branding is important not only to businesses,but also to the economy. The intellectual property laws and tax laws should thus further the legitimate goals of encouraging and protecting brand investments while maintaining a sound tax base. Intellectual property protections for branding depend on advertisement and enforcement, both of which demand significant amounts of private investment by firms. Although one would expect similar tax treatments of both categories of investment, the categories are actually treated as vastly different for federal income tax purposes. Additionally, tax distinctions also exist within each category. The result is that some branding investments are expensed and …

Copyright's Illogical Exclusion Of Conceptual Art That Changes Over Time, Zahr K. Said

Articles

This Essay argues that copyright illogically excludes conceptual art from protection on the basis of fixation, given that well-settled case law has interpreted the fixation requirement to reach works that contain certain kinds of change so long as they are sufficiently repetitive to be deemed permanent. While conceptual art may perhaps be better left outside the scope of copyright protection on the basis of its failure to meet copyright’s other requirements, this Essay concludes that fixation should not be the basis on which to exclude conceptual art from protection.

There are of course both normative and descriptive questions around the …

Much Ado About Transformativeness: The Seventh Circuit And Market-Centered Fair Use, Aaron B. Wicker

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ultimately rejected the concept of transformative use having a central role within the doctrine of fair use. In doing so, the Seventh Circuit broke with judicial precedent, namely the Supreme Court’s holding in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., where the Court unanimously held that the inquiry for the first factor of fair use is whether, and to what extent, the work is transformative. The Seventh Circuit’s 2014 decision raises questions about the scope of the holding in Campbell and about whether this holding …

Patented Electric Guitar Pickups And The Creation Of Modern Music Genres, Sean M. O'Connor

Articles

This Essay provides an overview of how patents played a core role in developing world-changing musical genres. This may be surprising, as normally copyright law is associated with incentivizing advances in the creative arts. But as this Conference’s theme [The IP Platform: Supporting Invention and Inspiration] and presentations emphasize, the whole range of intellectual property (“IP”), especially when viewed as a platform, supports innovation across the spectrum of human ingenuity and creativity.

This Essay is also intended to be read in conjunction with a viewing of the live-music demonstration of how pickups transformed popular music, delivered at the Conference and …

Judicial Wisdom Or Patent Envy? The Eleventh, Seventh And Federal Circuits’ Patent Jurisdictional Battle, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

This article observes a startling new appellate jurisdictional battle waged by regional circuit courts to chip away the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction in patent cases. The Eleventh Circuit took an unprecedented step by engaging in patent claim construction and infringement under literal infringement analysis and the doctrine of equivalents analysis. In a case of first impression, the Eleventh Circuit asserted that it legitimately has appellate jurisdiction to decide cases involving substantive patent law. Instead of grabbing jurisdiction, the Seventh Circuit, through its Chief Judge, grabbed public attention by advocating for the abolishment of the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent …