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Full-Text Articles in Law
Fairer Uses, Jessica Silbey
Fairer Uses, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
A response to Professor Joseph Liu’s paper on Fair Use, Notice Failure, and the Limits of Copyright as Property, this essay challenges Professor Liu to go even farther in his analysis and protection of the everyday audience of copyright works. In describing and analyzing what I term “fairer uses” on the basis of qualitative data from interviews of artists and authors who make and rely on copyrighted works for their own creativity and professional well-being, I support Professor Liu’s advocacy for maintaining “fuzzy boundaries” of fair use. Based on evidence from grounded practice of professional creators, their expansive application …
Patent Variation: Discerning Diversity Among Patent Functions, Jessica Silbey
Patent Variation: Discerning Diversity Among Patent Functions, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This Article describes and analyzes qualitative interview data collected over a five-year period. The goal of the interviews was to explore the roles of intellectual property (“IP”) in IP rich fields. Interviews were with diverse actors in a wide-range of industries: film, book publishing, visual arts, internet commerce, biology, engineering, chemistry, computer science. The data described and analyzed in this Article focuses on the specific question about the diverse functioning of patents in the subset of interviewees who are scientists and engineers, their lawyers and business partners. The Article proceeds in two parts. Part I describes the empirical dimension of …
Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey
Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This Article argues that the open-source and anti-expansionist rhetoric of current intellectual-property debates is a revolution of surface rhetoric but not of deep structure. What this Article terms “the Access Movements” are, by now, well-known communities devoted to providing more access to intellectual-property-protected goods, communities such as the Open Source Initiative and Access to Knowledge. This Article engages Movement actors in their critique of the balance struck by recent law (statutes and cases) and asks whether new laws that further restrict access to intellectual property “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” Relying on cases, statutes and recent …
Imperfect Property Rights, James Bessen
Imperfect Property Rights, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
In theory, property rights allow markets to achieve Pareto optimal allocations. But the literature on contracting largely ignores what happens when property rights are imperfectly defined and enforced. Although some models include weak enforcement or poorly defined rights or "anticommons," this paper develops a general model that includes all of these possibilities. I find that combinations matter: Policy prescriptions to remedy individual imperfections are sometimes inappropriate under other conditions. For example, stronger penalties for violating rights can decrease Pareto efficiency, contrary to a common view. Also, collective rights organizations, such as patent pools, sometimes worsen problems of overlapping claims.
Of Patents And Property, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen
Of Patents And Property, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general property rights institutions have a substantial direct effect on economic growth. Conversely, with a few important exceptions like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, empirical evidence indicates that intellectual property rights have at best only a weak and indirect effect on economic growth. Further, it appears that for public firms in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation for fear of winding up on …
Commentary On Economic And Ethical Reasons For Protecting Data, Wendy J. Gordon
Commentary On Economic And Ethical Reasons For Protecting Data, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Like Jane Ginsburg, I would like to drop back a bit, to talk about more general principles. Essentially, both of our primary speakers focused on a distinction between property and non-property modes of protecting data. I would like to highlight the economic and ethical reasons for maintaining that distinction.
New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon
New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
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.
Notes On Trademark Monopolies, Wendy J. Gordon, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.
Notes On Trademark Monopolies, Wendy J. Gordon, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.
Scholarship Chronologically
Since 1742, when Lord Hardwicke seemingly equated trademark protection with monopoly in one of the first trademark cases, until the mid- 1950s, concerns that trademarks represented a form of illegitimate monopoly effectively constrained the growth of trademark protection. In the twentieth century, Edward Chamberlain became the leading proponent of the trademark as monopoly view with the publication of his work, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, in 1933. In his work, Chamberlain argued that a trademark enabled its owner to differentiate her products and then to exclude others from using the differentiating feature. By doing so, trademark protection can effectively …
Conference On The 1992 Cable Tv Act - 1994, Wendy J. Gordon
Conference On The 1992 Cable Tv Act - 1994, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The CITI conference organizers have asked me to address the constitutionality of sections 12 and 19 of the new Cable Television Act. Speaking quite generally, these provisions purport to promote competition in the distribution of programming by prohibiting certain exclusive licenses and by prohibiting certain behaviors that could lead to exclusive licenses.
Blackmail: Deontology - 1993, Wendy J. Gordon
Blackmail: Deontology - 1993, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The basic logic of my deontologic approach is this.
Draft Of A Labor Theory Of Property - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon
Draft Of A Labor Theory Of Property - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The Supreme Court in several recent cases has flirted with the notion that labor gives one an entitlement to ownership: a legal right to bar others from the fruits of that labor or to extract payment from them if they use the fruits without permission. Sometimes articulated in terms of "natural rights," and sometimes in terms of "fairness," this notion is at apparent odds with contract law's insistence that the only "fruits of labor" one is obligated to pay for are those one has agreed in advance to buy.
Notes On Conceptions Of Property: Scientific And Ordinary - 1989, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes On Conceptions Of Property: Scientific And Ordinary - 1989, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
There's a lot that won't neatly fit in my LocKe article that needs to be said. The following, re ordinary and scientific theories of property, go in the Conception of Prop Article, for which there still seems a need.
Note On General Conclusion - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon
Note On General Conclusion - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The burden of the first part of this paper has been to suggest that tort law provides us no self-justifying notion of "wrongs" by which we can allocate rights and duties. The burden of the second part of this paper has been to suggest that contract law's notion of "consent" is similarly unable to provide justification for any particular system of rights. How would one go about constructing a theory by which to evaluate whether a given property system could be justified? A full answer to that question is surely outside the scope of this paper, but some basic points …
Note On Re Article On Definition Of Tort/Property - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon
Note On Re Article On Definition Of Tort/Property - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
Some distinctions in the law are fairly clear. For example, we seem to think that bad actions deserve to be punished, actions which are not personally blameworthy should not be punished, and that injuries to innocent persons should be compensated. But there are many instances in which these two goals cannot be simultaneously served. There we partially separate them, placing each in its own primary area of law. For those instances in which a bad action occurs and no one is injured, the criminal law has a remedy (the law of attempts). For those instances in which an innocent party …
Outline Of Green Bound - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Outline Of Green Bound - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
No abstract provided.
Notes On Conversations With Jim White - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes On Conversations With Jim White - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
Jim White suggested looking at the institutional issues separately from the issue of ideal outcomes.
Notes On Restitution - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes On Restitution - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The principle which allows payment for nondamaging uses of property is, I submit, this one: protecting the system of property from eroding. Looking at the leading case in the area, we see precisely that: the user of the property is required to pay for his use, lest he be placed in a better position than a non-trespasser. Any other rule might encourage erosion of property systems.
Notes On New Organization - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes On New Organization - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
No abstract provided.
Notes On Value - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes On Value - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The relation between value and property is very much at the core of this paper. First, as a theoretical matter (Holmes; the Ordinary Observer; custom and interactive pattern.) Second, intellectual products have increased greatly in value, shown both by statistics [3] and also by that unfortunate but fairly reliable secondary indicator of a phenomenon’s social importance: the volume of litigation concerning it.
Note On Individualized V Particularized Entitlement Inquiries - 1984, Wendy J. Gordon
Note On Individualized V Particularized Entitlement Inquiries - 1984, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
My analysis now looks something like this: Some entitlements should be "prima facie" protectible from invasion. That means that there are some entitlements which the owner should be able to protect even if he or she is unable to prove (a) that protection is in the net social interest or (b) that the invader's action is deserving of punishment. I would call these entitlements "property".