Law Commons^™

Intellectual Heirs Property: Why Certain Musical Copyrights Should Be Included In The Heirs Property Reform Movement, Austin Weatherly

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

The modern heirs property reform movement seeks to ameliorate the issues caused by the procedures governing the inheritance of real property from landowners who die intestate. This procedure can have a negative impact on heirs and the value of their inherited property. The reform movement, as it stands, only seeks to resolve the issues created by these procedures in the real property context. The rhetorical basis for the modern heirs property reform movement largely focuses on closing the racial wealth gap in the United States and slowing the wealth bleed from one black generation to the next. Many of the …

Exposing The “Folklore” Of Re-Recording Clauses (Taylor’S Version), Justin Tilghman

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Many artists believe that their significance, power, or notoriety comes from how many GRAMMY awards they have won or how well their albums sales do the first week. However, very few artists recognize that the true power comes in the form of owning the rights to their master recordings. Given how difficult it is to achieve commercial success as an independent artist, many artists will turn to major record companies to help with their music production and distribution. This help, however, is not unconditional. The artist will sign over the master recording rights to the song or album to the …

Greasing The Wheels Of Patent Law: Clarifying The Judicial Exceptions Via American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. V. Neapco Holdings Llc, Michael Oliver

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Patents stimulate the economy, they give inventors (and investors in the patent) confidence that their work will be protected. You have never been able to patent laws of nature, natural phenomena or abstract ideas. These combine to create the judicial exceptions. The issue is that these terms are so broad that it is difficult to determine when a patent is connected to a judicial exception. The Supreme Court created the Alice test, a two-part test to determine whether a claim is tied to a judicial exception. That was back in 2014 and is the last time the Supreme Court has …

When A “+” Doesn’T Add Anything In The Equation: Analyzing The Effect Of The “+” On Trademark Law, Vasilios Nasoulis

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

In the past decade, there has been a growing trend where companies use the plus sign, “+”, in their branding. From industry titans like Google and Apple to smaller, niche companies like World Champ Tech, there has been an increased use of the + in product and service names. This raises trademark questions about how the mark should be protected and how does the + change the meaning of a name. Trademarks are designed to protect producers as well as consumers from deceit, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. The + potentially denies producers and consumers these protections.

Another trend in the past …

Reconsidering The Willful Blindness Doctrine In Contributory Trademark Infringement, Andrew Ligon Fant

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

The Lanham Act provides for a cause of action of direct trademark infringement. In 1982 the Supreme Court effectively expanded that cause of action by allowing for traditional tort secondary liability in the context of manufacture and distribution of goods. Since that decision, the lower courts have adapted the doctrine of contributory trademark infringement to the modern world. One of those adaptations was the importation of the willful blindness doctrine from criminal law to trademark infringement law. The circuits have divergent standards for what knowledge is required for liability under willful blindness, and the Second Circuit appears to have multiple …

Patent Performativity, Dan L. Burk

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Gender bias is rife in the patent system; a large and growing body of empirical literature demonstrates the exclusion of women from the patent system at every level. Such pervasive marginalization cannot be explained by the paucity of women in STEM fields. Rather, more fundamental discriminatory mechanisms must be at work. In this paper I examine one aspect of such biases, arguing that patents operate as performatives, that is, as social assemblages that enact what they disclose, and that create their own social facts. To demonstrate patent performativity, I briefly trace the development of performative concepts, from Austinian declarations, through …