Law Commons^™

Machiavellian Intellectual Property, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In his controversial essay, “Faith-Based Intellectual Property,” Mark Lemley argues that moral theories of intellectual property are wrong because they are based on faith, rather than evidence. This article suggests that Lemley’s argument is controversial at least in part because it explicitly acknowledges that consequentialist and deontological theories of intellectual property rely on incompatible normative premises: consequentialist theories hold that intellectual property is justified only if it increases social welfare; deontological theories hold that intellectual property is justified even if it decreases social welfare. According to Berlin, the genius of Machiavelli was to recognize that when two moral theories have …

Copyright In A Nutshell For Found Footage Filmmakers, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Popular Media

Found footage is an existing motion picture that is used as an element of a new motion picture. Found footage filmmaking dates back to the origins of cinema. Filmmakers are practical and frugal, and happy to reuse materials when they can. But found footage filmmaking gradually developed into a rough genre of films that included documentaries, parodies, and collages. And found footage became a familiar element of many other genres, which used found footage to illustrate a historical point or evoke an aesthetic response.

It can be difficult to determine whether found footage is protected by copyright, who owns the …

Scenes From The Copyright Office, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This essay uses a series of vignettes drawn from Billy Joel’s career to describe his encounters with copyright law. It begins by examining the ownership of the copyright in Joel’s songs. It continues by considering the authorship of Joel’s songs, and it concludes by evaluating certain infringement actions filed against Joel. This Essay observes that Joel’s encounters with copyright law were confusing and frustrating, but also quite typical. The banality of his experiences captures the uncertainty and incoherence of copyright doctrine.

Unh School Of Law Ip Library: 20th Anniversary Reflection On The Only Academic Ip Library In The United States, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] The UNH School of Law Intellectual Property Library celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. It is a fortuitous time for this look back and for strategic considerations for the future. This anniversary comes at a time in the history of legal education when conditions over the past few years have intensified the analysis of mission and resources for law school libraries. This article is a retrospective review of the history and dynamics surrounding the founding and first twenty years of growth. It is also an analysis of the future growth and mission of the IP Library during times that …

Plagiarism Is Not A Crime, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Copyright infringement and plagiarism are related but distinct concepts. Copyright prohibits certain uses of original works of authorship without permission. Plagiarism norms prohibit copying certain expressions, facts, and ideas without attribution. The prevailing theory of copyright is the economic theory, which holds that copyright is justified because it is economically efficient. This article considers whether academic plagiarism norms are economically efficient. It concludes that academic plagiarism norms prohibiting non-copyright infringing plagiarism are not efficient and should be ignored.

Copyright In Pantomime, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Why does the Copyright Act specifically provide for the protection of “pantomimes”? This Article shows that the Copyright Act of 1976 amended the subject matter of copyright to include pantomimes simply in order to conform it to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. It further shows that the Berlin Act of 1909 amended the Berne Convention to provide for copyright protection of “les pantomimes” and “entertainments in dumb show” in order to ensure copyright protection of silent motion pictures. Unfortunately, the original purpose of providing copyright protection to '“pantomimes” was forgotten. This Article argues that …

Ip As Metaphor, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Everybody hates intellectual property trolls. They are parasites, who abuse intellectual property by forcing innovators to pay an unjust toll. Even worse are intellectual property pirates. They are thieves, who steal intellectual property by using it without the consent of its owner. By contrast, everybody loves innovators. They are farmers, entitled to reap what they have sown and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

But trolls, pirates, and farmers are metaphors. A "troll" abuses intellectual property only if its ownership or use of that intellectual property is unjustified, a "pirate" steals intellectual property only if the ownership of that intellectual …

Copyright As Charity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Copyright and charity law are generally considered distinct and unrelated bodies of law. But they are actually quite similar and complement each other. Both copyright and charity law are intended to increase social welfare by solving market and government failures in public goods caused by free riding. Copyright solves market and government failures in works of authorship by providing an indirect subsidy to marginal authors, and charity law solves market and government failures in charitable goods by providing an indirect subsidy to marginal donors. Copyright and charity law complement each other by solving market and government failures in works of …

Teaching Would-Be Ip Lawyers To "Speak Engineer": An Interdisciplinary Module To Teach New Intellectual Property Attorneys To Work Across Disciplines, Cynthia Laury Dahl

All Faculty Scholarship

More than ever before, law school graduates interested in business law enter a workforce where they must effectively interface with professionals from other disciplines. Yet there are precious few opportunities in law school for students to practice the skills required to perform on an interdisciplinary team. This is especially true regarding mixed teams of law and technical students.

This essay explores a model for integrating an interdisciplinary practicum module into a free-standing class. The module challenges teams of law and engineering students to work together to perform a prior art search, interview an inventor, and draft patent claims over a …

The Case Against Federalizing Trade Secrecy, Christopher B. Seaman

Scholarly Articles

Trade secrecy is unique among the major intellectual property (IP) doctrines because it is governed primarily by state law. Recently, however, a number of influential actors — including legislators, academics, and organizations representing IP attorneys and owners — have proposed creating a private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation under federal law. Proponents assert that federalizing trade secrecy would provide numerous benefits, including substantive uniformity, the availability of a federal forum for misappropriation litigation, and the creation of a unified national regime governing IP rights.

This Article engages in the first systematic critique of the claim that federalizing …

Copyright's Technological Interdependencies, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright was initially conceptualized as a means to free creative parties from dependency on public and private patrons such as monarchs, churches, and well-to-do private citizens. By achieving independence for creative parties, the theory ran, copyright led to greater production of a more diverse set of creative works.

But this lingering conception of copyright is both inaccurate and harmful. It is inaccurate because, in today’s world, creative parties are increasingly dependent upon “Technological Patronage” from the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, and others. Thus, rather than being alternatives or adversaries, copyright and Technological Patronage are increasingly interdependent in facilitating both …

Promoting Progress: A Qualitative Analysis Of Creative And Innovative Production, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is based on data collected as part of a larger qualitative empirical study based on face-to-face interviews with artists, scientists, engineers, their lawyers, agents and business partners. Broadly, the project involves the collecting and analysis of these interviews to understand how and why the interviewees create and innovate and to make sense of the intersection between intellectual property law and creative and innovative activity from the ground up. This chapter specifically investigates the concept of “progress” as discussed in the interviews. “Promoting progress” is the ostensible goal of the intellectual property protection in the United States, but what …

Machine Learning And Law, Harry Surden

Publications

This Article explores the application of machine learning techniques within the practice of law. Broadly speaking “machine learning” refers to computer algorithms that have the ability to “learn” or improve in performance over time on some task. In general, machine learning algorithms are designed to detect patterns in data and then apply these patterns going forward to new data in order to automate particular tasks. Outside of law, machine learning techniques have been successfully applied to automate tasks that were once thought to necessitate human intelligence — for example language translation, fraud-detection, driving automobiles, facial recognition, and data-mining. If performing …

Territorial Exclusivity In U.S. Copyright And Trademark Law, Christine Farley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Currently, U.S. trademark and copyright law both adopt employ a regime of international exhaustion of rights with respect to parallel importation after the Supreme Court ruled in Kirtsaeng last term. This agreement belies the fact that these two areas of law have developed in nearly divergent directions and have resulted in faltering intellectual property and trade policies. Currently, interpretation of the first sale doctrine hinges on the particular legal characteristics of both trademarks and copyrights. When dealing with trademarks, courts ultimately focus on the source of origin, taking into account consumer expectations or, instead, focusing on the business relationship, if …

Trips-Plus Trade And Investment Agreements: Why More May Be Less For Economic Development, Christine Farley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Conventional wisdom -- but not empirical research -- maintains that strong intellectual property (“IP”) rights trigger not only foreign direct investment, but also local innovation. Thus investors seek, and developing countries compete to offer, the highest levels of IP protections. But evaluating the level of IP protection in any given country has become increasingly complex. A proliferation of bilateral agreements, such as free trade agreements (“FTAs”) and bilateral investment treaties (“BITs”), intended to enhance the minimum standards set forth in The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”), have created uncertainty about precisely what IP protections are …

Parody As Brand, Stacey Dogan, Mark Lemley

Faculty Scholarship

Courts have struggled with the evaluation of parody under trademark law. While many trademark courts have protected parodies, there are a surprising number of cases that hold obvious parodies illegal. The problem is particularly severe with respect to parodies that are used to brand products, a growing category. The doctrinal tools that generally protect expressive parodies often don't apply to brand parodies. Our goal in this paper is to think about what circumstances (if any) should lead courts to find parody illegal. We conclude that, despite courts’ increasing attention to speech interests in recent years, the law’s treatment of parody …

Selected Resources On Copyright Law, Leonard Klein

Research Guides

This research guide provides specialized primary and secondary sources on copyright law, including specialized reporters on copyright law, interactive tutorials, and websites.

The Competitive Advantage Of Weak Patents, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Does U.S. patent law increase the competitiveness of U.S. firms in global markets? This Article argues that, contrary to the beliefs of many U.S. lawmakers, U.S. patent law currently undermines the ability of U.S. firms to compete in global markets because strong U.S. patent rights actually weaken an overlooked but critical determinant of U.S. competitiveness: rivalry among U.S. firms. Intense domestic rivalry drives firms to improve relentlessly, spawns related and supporting domestic industries, and encourages the domestic development of advanced factors of production—like specialized labor forces. U.S. patents restrict rivalry among foreign firms less because U.S. patents have little extraterritorial …

The Tragedy Of The Commons: A Hybrid Approach To Trade Secret Legal Theory, Jonathan R. K. Stroud

Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Patent Invalidity Versus Noninfringement, Roger Allen Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Most patent scholars agree that the Patent and Trademark Office grants too many invalid patents and that these patents impose a significant tax upon industry and technological innovation. Although policymakers and scholars have proposed various ways to address this problem, including better ex ante review by patent examiners and various forms of ex post administrative review, district courts invalidating patents in litigation remain a core defense against bad patents. This article analyzes a previously unidentified impediment to the use of district courts to invalidate patents. Nearly every patent lawsuit rises or falls on one of two defenses: invalidity or noninfringement. …

Technological Cost As Law In Intellectual Property, Harry Surden

Publications

Changes in the scope of IP legal rights are generally thought to be linked to changes in positive law. This Article argues that shifts in the scope of IP laws are often driven by changes in technological feasibility and not by changes in positive law. Diminishing technological constraint is an under-acknowledged factor driving changes in substantive IP law.

More specifically, there are certain activities that are core to IP law. Such activities include, for example, the copying of creative works in copyright (e.g. duplicating books or music), or the manufacturing of products in patent law. Traditionally, IP legal theory has …

Inventing Norms, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Patent law strives to promote the progress of technology by encouraging invention. Traditionally, scholars contend that patent law achieves this goal by creating financial incentives to invent in the form of exclusive rights to new technology. This traditional view of invention, however, fails to recognize that inventors are motivated by more than money. Like most people, inventors are also motivated by social norms, that is, shared normative beliefs favoring certain actions while disfavoring others. This Article argues that many Americans embrace social norms that favor and encourage successful invention. Because of these "inventing norms" inventors enjoy enhanced personal satisfaction and …

Acta's Constitutional Problem: The Treaty That Is Not A Treaty (Or An Executive Agreement), Sean Flynn

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

The planned entry of the U.S. into the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) poses a unique Constitutional problem. The problem is that the President lacks constitutional authority to bind the U.S. to the agreement without congressional consent; but that lack of authority may not prevent the U.S. from being bound to the agreement under international law. If the administration succeeds in its plan, ACTA may be a binding international treaty (under international law) that is not a treaty (under U.S. Constitutional law).

An Overview And The Evolution Of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), Margot E. Kaminski

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a plurilateral intellectual property agreement developed outside of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), represents an attempt to introduce maximalist intellectual property standards in the international sphere, outside of existing institutional checks and balances. ACTA is primarily a copyright treaty, masquerading as a treaty that addresses dangerous medicines and defective imports. The latest ACTA draft, which is the final text available to the public before the signed text is released, contains significant shifts away from earlier draft language towards more moderate language, although it poses the same institutional problems …

Acta: Risks Of Third Party Enforcement For Access To Medicines, Brook K. Baker

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

In its current near-final draft form, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA] being negotiated plurilaterally—and largely secretly—by a self-selected group of countries proposes to allow preliminary and final injunctive relief against third parties (third-party enforcement) to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights and/or to prevent infringing goods from entering into the channels of commerce. There is lingering uncertainty whether the relevant civil enforcement section will apply to the entire range of intellectual property rights or whether patents will be excluded. If patents are excluded, the dangers in ACTA would be reduced but not eliminated—new globalized forms of third-party enforcement would still …

The Global Ip Upward Ratchet, Anti-Counterfeiting And Piracy Enforcement Efforts: The State Of Play, Susan Sell

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Proponents of an IP maximalist agenda increasingly have been rebuffed in recent years. Developing country governments, NGOs, and Access to Knowledge (A2K) advocates have thwarted their efforts to ratchet up standards of intellectual property protection in multilateral intergovernmental forums such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Health Organization. A2K advocates challenge the premises behind ever higher and broader intellectual property protection and seek, if not a rolling back of IP rights, at the very least a standstill. They argue that in the balance between rights and obligations, IP maximalists assert their rights without …

Collateral Damage: The Impact Of Acta And The Enforcement Agenda On The World's Poorest People, Andrew Rens

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

ACTA is billed as a trade agreement, and it is likely to have a far reaching impact on the poorest people in the world. ACTA's purported aim is to increase the efficacy of enforcement of intellectual property. However, like the enforcement agenda that gave rise to it, ACTA's provisions threaten access to medicines, access to learning materials, and access to markets by developing countries, and in so doing threaten development.

Flouting The Elmo Necessity And Denying The Local Roots Of Interpretation: "Anthropology's" Quarrel With Acta And Authoritarian Ip Regimes, Alexander S. Dent

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This paper uses an anthropological definition of culture to examine the intensification of intellectual property policing, coupled with an expansion of its definition. These are ACTA’s aims. I argue that acts of sharing lie at the root of communication; humans must share in order to learn. Furthermore, symbols change their meaning as they circulate in different cultural contexts. Therefore, in denying the fundamental importance of sharing and local interpretation, ACTA will not only fail spectacularly as a policy document. It will also fuel a “war” on file-sharers, users of generic medicines, and manufacturers, sellers, and buyers of imitative goods and …

Public Interest Representation In Global Ip Policy Institutions, Jeremy Malcolm

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This paper compares the institutional and procedural arrangements that a range of global institutions make for civil society representation and input into policy development processes on intellectual property issues. The context for this analysis comes from two sets of norms for multi-stakeholder public policy development that exist in other regimes of governance: those of the Aarhus Convention (for environmental matters), and those of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (for Internet governance). These global norms, along with the actual practices of the institutions involved in global governance of intellectual property rights, are then contrasted with the proposed new institutional …

The Impact Of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) On Canadian Copyright Law, Elizabeth Judge, Saleh Al-Sharieh

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

With the advent of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the protection and enforceability of intellectual property rights will continue growing. Canadians, like other citizens whose countries may adhere to this treaty, would notice major changes to the legal systems regulating their rights and obligations with respect to intellectual property. With respect to copyright law, by deciding to be a party of ACTA, Canada would be facing a true challenge of fulfilling its international obligations and at the same time preserving its carefully drawn copyright law and policy. This paper argues that the impact of ACTA on Canadian copyright law would …