Law Commons^™

Who’S Afraid Of Forever 21?: Combating Copycatting Through Extralegal Enforcement Of Moral Rights In Fashion Designs, Irina Oberman Khagi

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article examines the often underexplored theory of personality rights, or moral rights, as a justification for protection of intellectual property in the context of protection of fashion designs. Traditional forms of intellectual property protection have thus far proven inadequate to protect the overall design of an article of clothing or accessory; rather, most are only sufficient to protect portions of the design. Advocates for strengthened intellectual property rights regimes traditionally invoke utilitarian rights, or the need to provide an incentive for continued generation of new ideas. But these utilitarian theories appear to be less relevant in the fashion world, …

The Non-Contractual Nature Of Privacy Policies And A New Critique Of The Notice And Choice Privacy Protection Model, Thomas B. Norton

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Notice and Choice is the model for protecting privacy online in the United States. Under the model, users of online services are given notice about services information and privacy practices in the form of privacy policies. Based on this information, users can choose whether to use particular online services and whether to exercise any options for protecting their privacy that the services might offer. In theory, Notice and Choice seems like a sound regulatory mechanism. Indeed, state and federal regulatory agencies prefer the model as a basis for privacy enforcement action. But Notice and Choice faces harsh criticism from privacy …

Gif Gaffe: How Big Sports Ignored Lenz And Used The Dmca To Chill Free Speech On Twitter, Andrew T. Warren

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Many major sports leagues including the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and Ultimate Fighting Championship have consistently used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to remove user-created GIFs, Vines, and related content that make use of the leagues’ copyrighted broadcast material on Twitter. This Article analyzes Twitter users’ right of fair use in the leagues’ copyrighted material, while suggesting that sports leagues and their agents may not be following the Ninth Circuit’s Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.decision, which requires copyright owners to consider fair use before submitting DMCA takedown notices. Sports leagues’ protocol and actions towards GIFs and Vines …

Supreme Court Amicus Brief Of Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner Lee V. Tam, No. 15-1293 (Filed Nov. 16, 2016), Christine Farley, Rebecca Tushnet

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Federal Circuit’s ruling that the § 2(a) disparagement provision is unconstitutional, if upheld, could allow for numerous provisions of the Trademark Act to be overturned, dismantling the modern trademark system. The trademark system is premised on evaluating speech and making content-based determinations. Granting a trademark registration requires content-based determinations, though not viewpoint-based, as words are evaluated independent of applicants’ individual viewpoints.In no way does the refusal to register a trademark prevent its use or diminish public debate. Rather than facilitating public debate, a trademark registration is a government-issued document that makes it easier for its owner to suppress the …

Arbitration Without Law: Choice Of Law In Frand Disputes, Eli Greenbaum

Res Gestae

Recent arbitration between InterDigital and Huawei seems to demonstrate the purported advantages of arbitration as a means of dispute resolution. The warring parties subsumed their multiple suits across different jurisdictions and forums into a single binding arbitral process. By virtue of the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (“the New York Convention”), the arbitral award would be enforceable across jurisdictions. But even an agreement to arbitrate requires agreement on certain basic matters. On the most fundamental level, it requires agreement on the substantive and procedural laws governing the dispute, as well as the situs—or location—of the …

Newsroom: Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles 11-14-2016, Jill Rodrigues, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News Guiding Startups Through Legal Pickles: Law Students Launch Artisan Pickler And Other Businesses To Success 11/09/2016, Jill Rodriques

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Movement For Open Access Law, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

My claim in this contribution to this important symposium is that the law and legal scholarship should be freely available on the Internet, and copyright law and licensing should facilitate achievement of this goal. This claim reflects the combined aims of those who support the movement for open access law. This nascent movement is a natural extension of the well-developed movement for free access to primary legal materials and the equally well-developed open access movement, which seeks to make all scholarly journal articles freely available on the Internet. Legal scholars have only general familiarity with the first movement and very …

Fixing Fair Use, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

The fair use doctrine in copyright law balances expressive freedoms by permitting one to use another’s copyrighted expression under certain circumstances. The doctrine’s extreme context-sensitivity renders it of little value to those who require reasonable ex ante certainty about the legality of a proposed use. In this Article, Professor Carroll advances a legislative proposal to create a Fair Use Board in the U.S. Copyright Office that would have power to declare a proposed use of another’s copyrighted work to be a fair use. Like a private letter ruling from the IRS or a “no action” letter from the SEC, a …

Patent Injunctions And The Problem Of Uniformity Cost, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

In eBay v. MercExchange, the Supreme Court correctly rejected a one-size-fits-all approach to patent injunctions. However, the Court's opinion does not fully recognize that the problem of uniformity in patent law is more general and that this problem cannot be solved through case-by-case analysis. This Essay provides a field guide for implementing eBay using functional analysis and insights from a uniformity-cost framework developed more fully in prior work. While there can be no general rule governing equitable relief in patent cases, the traditional four factor analysis for injunctive relief should lead the cases to cluster around certain patterns that often …

Brief For Amicus Curiae Law Professors And Scholars In Support Of Apellee, In Authors Guild V. Google, Inc., Michael W. Carroll, Brandon Butler, Meredith Jacob

Michael W. Carroll

No abstract provided.

Creative Commons As Conversational Copyright, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Copyright law's default settings inhibit sharing and adaptation of creative works even though new digital technologies greatly enhance individuals' capacity to engage in creative conversation. Creative Commons licenses enable a form of conversational copyright through which creators share their works, primarily over the Internet, while asserting some limitation on user's right with respect to works in the licensed commons. More specifically, this chapter explains the problems in copyright law to which Creative Commons licenses respond, the methods chosen, and why the machine-readable and public aspects of the licenses are specific examples of a more general phenomenon in digital copyright law …

A Realist Approach To Copyright Law's Formalities, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Rejecting the conventional story that formalities in copyright law were abolished by the Berne Convention, this Article demonstrates that privately administered systems of formalities play a significant role in the administration of copyright law worldwide. Indeed, they must because copyright is designed to support a transaction structure which requires rightsholders who seek to attract licensing partners to go through some formal step to identify themselves and the works in which they have a legal or beneficial interest. Canvassing the landscape of mandatory and voluntary public and private systems of formalities, this article argues that: (1) national policymakers retain more policy …

Creative Commons And The New Intermediaries, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

This symposium contribution examines the disintermediating and reintermediating roles played by Creative Commons licenses on the Internet. Creative Commons licenses act as a disintermediating force because they enable end-to-end transactions in copyrighted works. The licenses have reintermediating force by enabling new services and new online communities to form around content licensed under a Creative Commons license. Intermediaries focused on the copyright dimension have begun to appear online as search engines, archives, libraries, publishers, community organizers, and educators. Moreover, the growth of machine-readable copyright licenses and the new intermediaries that they enable is part of a larger movement toward a Semantic …

Forward, Jonas Anderson

J. Jonas Anderson

No abstract provided.

A Trademark Holder's Hangover: Reconciling The Lanham Act With The Alcohol And Tobacco Tax And Trade Bureau's System Of Designating American Viticultural Areas, Julia Lynn Titolo

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Let's Not Go Crazy: Why Lenz V. Universal Music Corp. Undermines The Notice And Takedown Process Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Mareasa M. Fortunato

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Why Coca-Cola's Fictional Lawsuit Against Coke Zero For Taste Infringement Is A Losing Battle, Jessica Nicole Cox

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

I Want My Mp3: Legal And Policy Barriers To A Legitimate Digital Music Marketplace, Shane Wagman, Future Of Music Coalition

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) has provided a voice in Washington, D.C. for musicians since 2000. One of our principal beliefs is that creation, both artistic and technological, is valuable and that artists deserve to be compensated for their work. The amount of this compensation and the mechanisms to facilitate payment are, of course, subject to contracts, market value, and other factors, some experimental or technological in nature. FMC also believes that music fans should be able to lawfully access the music they want without undue barriers or restrictions. Needless to say, finding the appropriate balance between creators' rights …

The Constitutionality Of The Appointment Of Copyright Royalty Judges By The Librarian Of Congress Under The Appointments Clause, John P. Strohm

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Reconciling Social Norms And Copyright Law: Strategies For Persuading People To Pay For Recorded Music, Mark F. Schultz

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Copyright--My Story: A One-Woman Play, Corey Field

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Promise And Peril Of Collective Listening, Whitney Broussard

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Digital-Age Claims For Old-World Rights, Joseph M. Beck, Allison M. Scott

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Symposium Introduction, Bertis Downs

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Vol. 17:1, Journal Of Intellectual Property Law

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Physicalism And Patent Theory, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

United States patent law’s view on the need for a physical embodiment of the invention, and the continued production and use of an embodiment, has varied over the last two centuries. In the early days, the requirement for “physicalism” was high, with the inventor being required to actually reduce the invention to practice prior to patenting, and enforceability was tied to “working” the claimed invention. By the early 1900s, these requirements of physicalism disappeared. This changing view on physicalism speaks volumes as to which major patent theory the law emphasizes, with physicalism supporting the incentive to invent theory and the …

Resolving The Divided Patent Infringement Dilemma, Nathanial Grow

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article considers cases of divided patent infringement: those in which two or more parties collectively perform all the steps of a patented claim, but where no single party acting alone has completed the entire patented invention. Despite the increasing frequency with which such cases appear to be arising, courts have struggled to equitably resolve these lawsuits under the constraints of the existing statutory framework because of the competing policy concerns they present. On the one hand, any standard that holds two or more parties strictly liable whenever their combined actions infringe a patent risks imposing liability on countless seemingly …

Product Hopping: A New Framework, Michael A. Carrier, Steve D. Shadowen

Notre Dame Law Review

One of the most misunderstood and anticompetitive business behaviors in today’s economy is “product hopping,” which occurs when a brand-name pharmaceutical company switches from one version of a drug to another. These switches, benign in appearance but not necessarily in effect, can significantly decrease consumer welfare, impairing competition from generic drugs to an extent that greatly exceeds any gains from the “improved” branded product.

The antitrust analysis of product hopping is nuanced. It implicates the intersection of antitrust law, patent law, the Hatch-Waxman Act, and state drug product selection laws. In fact, the behavior is even more complex because it …

Patent Disclosures And Time, Timothy R. Holbrook

Vanderbilt Law Review

Patents by their very nature are pregnant with considerations of time. The exclusive rights they afford only last for a finite period- generally from issuance until twenty years from the filing date of the application. Moreover, since patents necessarily engage with the evolution of technology, patents reflect various "snap shots" in time that reflect the state of the art at a particular moment. Patent law must constantly wrestle with time. Many of these topics have been explored extensively in both judicial decisions and the literature. The most obvious example of considering the temporal aspect of patent law is ... obviousness. …