Law Commons^™

Keynote Address: Stalemate Or Statesmen: What Is Needed To Move Forward Constructively With The Balancing Of America's Ip System?, David J. Kappos

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Silent Similarity, Jessica Litman

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form—silent movies—had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases—in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures—are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. In particular, the problem at the heart …

Federal Circuit's Obviousness Test For New Pharmaceutical Compounds: Gobbledygook?, Douglas L. Rogers

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Balancing Test: A Better Approach To Fair Use In Copyright, Charlie Penrod

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Fair use analyses are overly vague and abstract. While the Copyright Act established four factors for courts to consider when determining if an alleged infringer’s use of copyrighted work is “fair”, these factors are not susceptible to easy interpretation. More importantly, once these factors have been interpreted, a trier of fact is instructed to balance these factors against each other. No effective method currently exists in guiding courts as to how to balance inherently disparate factors against each other, either in terms of intensity of the factors or how one factor might balance against another totally different factor. This article …

The End Of (Meta) Search Engines In Europe?, Martin Husovec

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Trademark Extortionist Revisited: A Response To Vogel And Schachter, Kenneth L. Port

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Trademark bullying (a.k.a. trademark extortion) is a very controversial notion in trademark litigation in the United States. There, for sure, is a lot of illegitimate trademark infringement happening. Anecdotally, we also know that trademark holders often overstep in the assertion of their otherwise legitimate rights. For the first time, this article documents how large a problem trademark bullying is and how often it happens. Trademark bullying occurs when there is evidence that a trademark holder asserts a non-famous mark against a non-competing entity on or in connection with goods or services into which the plaintiff has no reasonable expectation of …

Patent, But Where Is Home And Global Justice? A Rawlsian And Senian Inquiry, Deming Liu

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Mourning The Loss Of Copyright's Unsung Hero: Destruction Of The First Sale Doctrine, C. Todd Mosley

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Mind-Movies: Original Authorship As Applied To Works From "Mind-Reading" Neurotechnology, Theo Austin Bruton

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

U.S. courts frequently analyze new technology under copyright law. Over the years, the courts have applied copyright law to photographic cameras, computer programs, digital video recorders, and much more. However, a recent breakthrough in the neuroscience community may force judges to apply copyright standards in an unorthodox fashion. A group of researchers at UC Berkeley devised a process that reconstructs video sequences from the human brain, essentially creating a movie from the person’s mind. As this neurotechnology develops, it is uncertain how judges will apply copyright law to content taken directly from the brain. Nevertheless, this Article argues that such …

Keeping It Under Wraps: Trade Secrecy For Offshore Asset Protection Plans, Thomas A. Brunty

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Saving The Federal Circuit, Paul R. Gugliuzza

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In a recent, attention-grabbing speech, the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit, Diane Wood, argued that Congress should abolish the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases. Exclusive jurisdiction, she said, provides too much legal uniformity, which harms the patent system. In this response to Judge Wood’s thoughtful speech, I seek to highlight two important premises underlying her argument, neither of which is indisputably true.

The first premise is that the Federal Circuit actually provides legal uniformity. Judge Wood suggests that, due to the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction, patent doctrine is insufficiently “percolated,” meaning that it lacks mechanisms through which …

Managing The Changes To The Oath Or Declaration Requirement: The Effect Of The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act Oath Or Declaration Change On Corporations, Adam Thompson

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Online Tracking: Can The Free Market Create Choice Where None Exists?, Benjamin Strauss

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Abolishing Exclusive Jurisdiction In The Federal Circuit: A Response To Judge Wood, Rochelle C. Dreyfus

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Part of a symposium of responses to Chief Judge Wood’s suggestion for giving regional circuits a share of the Federal Circuit’s authority over patent law, this article argues that now that a degree of nationwide uniformity in patent law has been achieved, it would be a pity to disrupt it. While Chief Judge Wood is right that the law would improve with percolation, a change in the composition of the court, new procedures for challenging patents in the Patent and Trademark Office, a District Court pilot program, and satellite patent offices will bring to the debate new voices, different kinds …

Competing With The “Patent Court”: A Newly Robust Ecosystem, Arti K. Rai

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In a provocative address, Chief Judge Wood of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals suggests exposing the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, created in 1982 to hear all appeals from patent cases, to competition from sister appellate courts. This response, published as part of a Symposium on Chief Judge Wood's address, argues that competition is indeed desirable. Whether such competition is best provided by other appellate courts is unclear, however. The more tractable approach is to improve competitive input from sources that have already emerged. These include dissenting Federal Circuit judges, parties and amici who are not "patent …

Federal Circuit Exclusive Appellate Patent Jurisdiction: A Response To Chief Judge Wood, Harold C. Wegner

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Globalizing Standard Of Patent Protection In Wto Law And Policy Options For The Ldcs: The Context Of Bangladesh, M. Monirul Azam

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

This Article analyzes the globalizing standard of patent protection as adopted under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and possible options for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) such as Bangladesh against the experiences of Brazil, India, and South Africa with special reference to pharmaceutical patent issues.

It’S Blonder-Tongue All Over Again, Alex Kozinski, Daniel Mandell

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Reconciling Twombly And Patent Pleadings Beyond The Text Of Form 18, Yoonhee Kim

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.