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Intellectual Property Law

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Copyright reform

Publication Year

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The Pragmatic Incrementalism Of Common Law Intellectual Property, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Nov 2010

The Pragmatic Incrementalism Of Common Law Intellectual Property, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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‘Common law intellectual property’ refers to a set of judge-made legal regimes that create exclusionary entitlements in different kinds of intangibles. Principally the creation of courts, many of these regimes are older than their statutory counterparts and continue to co-exist with them. Surprisingly though, intellectual property scholarship has paid scant attention to the nuanced law-making mechanisms and techniques that these regimes employ to navigate through several of intellectual property law’s substantive and structural problems. Common law intellectual property regimes employ a process of rule development that this Article calls ‘pragmatic incrementalism’. It involves the use of pragmatic and minimalist techniques …


Rethinking Copyright: Property Through The Lenses Of Unjust Enrichment And Unfair Competition, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Jan 2008

Rethinking Copyright: Property Through The Lenses Of Unjust Enrichment And Unfair Competition, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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Responding to Sara K. Stadler Copyright as Trade Regulation:

This Response examines Professor Stadler's argument that “the copyright grant be reformulated to consist of no more than an exclusive right to distribute works publicly.” He agrees that “copyright law ought to be visualized as a doctrine of unfair competition,” but offers an alternative conception of “implementing this ideal.” Balganesh writes, “Since copyright is about generating incentives for creation, we might want to connect [a competitive] nexus requirement to copyright's instrumental purpose through a test of foreseeability. Given that liability for infringement is premised on a showing of copying, such …