Law Commons^™

The Origins Of American Design Patent Protection, Jason John Du Mont, Mark D. Janis

Indiana Law Journal

Many firms invest heavily in the way their products look, and they rely on a handful of intellectual property regimes to stop rivals from producing look-alikes. Two of these regimes—copyright and trademark—have been closely scrutinized in intellectual property scholarship. A third, the design patent, remains little understood except among specialists. In particular, there has been virtually no analysis of the design patent system’s core assumption: that the rules governing patents for inventions should be incorporated en masse for designs.

One reason why the design patent system has remained largely unexplored in the literature is that scholars have never explained how …

Naming, Identity, And Trademark Law, Laura A. Heymann

Indiana Law Journal

As the process of creation in the age of digital media becomes more fluid, one pervasive theme has been the desire for attribution: from the creator’s perspective, to receive credit for what one does (and to have credit not falsely attributed) and from the audience’s perspective, to understand the source of material with which one engages. But our norms of attribution reflect some inconsistencies in defining the relationship among name, identity, and authenticity. A blog post by a writer identified only by a pseudonym may prove to be very influential in the court of public opinion, while the use of …

Entertainment Title Duplication Cases: A Process Of Evolution

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.