Law Commons^™

Vaccine Clinical Trials And Data Infrastructure, Ana Santos Rutschman

Utah Law Review

We find ourselves at a momentous turn in the history of vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a quasi-global vaccine race that not only compressed vaccine research and development (R&D) timelines, but also paved the way for the administration of a new type of vaccine technology – mRNA vaccines, which work in substantially different ways from the vaccines in use before the pandemic.

While the process of bringing emerging COVID-19 vaccines to market has taken place in an unusually short timeframe, it was largely predicated on the same scientific and regulatory processes that govern the development, approval and deployment of new …

A Typology Of Disclosure, Sharon K. Sandeen

Akron Law Review

Information and data have always been valuable to businesses, but in the Information Age, as businesses have figured out more ways to commoditize the information and data they possess, there has been a corresponding increase in expressed concerns about the unauthorized “disclosure” of information. Often, these concerns are expressed in absolute terms, as if any unauthorized disclosure of information constitutes an act of unfair competition or theft. The problem is that the common understanding of disclosure, particularly among information owners that seek to restrict access to the information they possess, belies the legal meaning of the term as used in …

Striking The Right Balance: Following The Doj's Lead For Innovation In Standardized Technology, Kristen Osenga

Akron Law Review

Today’s technology standards are the result of an extraordinary amount of innovation, collaboration and competition. These concepts are interrelated, and each is enhanced or enabled by intellectual property. Where these three concepts come together in standards development, it is unsurprising that antitrust concerns are also present. Specifically, the interests of contributors, participants, and implementers must be fairly balanced to ensure that the appropriate types and levels of innovation, collaboration, and competition can occur—and that the public will benefit. It is important that antitrust enforcement involving standards development organizations and owners of standards essential patents recognize the careful balance of these …

After The Trolls: Patent Litigation As Ex Post Market-Making, Robert Merges

Akron Law Review

Patent policy has been dominated lately by efforts to reduce rent-seeking patent troll litigation. As recent reforms begin to take effect, it is timely to consider the more constructive aspects of patent litigation. This Article contends that the lag between product development and patent litigation, which pushes the problem of patent valuation into the ex post (after product development) period, serves just such a positive function. Re-search, development, and product roll-out can all take place first. Then, at a later stage, patent litigation sorts out the relative merits and contributions of the various inventors and competitors who contributed to the …

Emotions And Intellectual Property Law, Margaret Chon

Akron Law Review

Emotions constitute an integral part of the diverse approaches that we bring to bear upon our most pressing law and policy issues. This article explores the role of emotions in intellectual property, information, and technology law (IP). Like other areas of law, IP commits to, prioritizes, and even honors, reason, logic, and facts—which can result in the sidelining of the affective components of law. Yet our affective responses to legal and other phenomena influence both cognition and reason. Part I of the article provides a general overview of the field of law and emotions, pointing out how this approach to …

Copyrighting Tiktok Dances: Choreography In The Internet Age, Ali Johnson

Washington Law Review

TikTok is a video-sharing social media application that launched in 2018 and has grown wildly since its inception. Many users are drawn to the platform by “dance challenges”—short dance routines of varying complexity set to popular songs that are recreated by other users, eventually going “viral” (i.e., recreated on a massive scale by other users) on the app. Going viral can provide young dancers and choreographers an opportunity to break into the highly competitive entertainment industry. However, there is a problem: due to TikTok’s interface and community practices, the original creators of a dance (who, significantly, are often young women …

Games Without Frontiers: The Increasing Importance Of Intellectual Property Rights In The People’S Republic Of China, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual property (“IP”) protection in the People's Republic of China has been murky and amorphous. The country is currently enjoying a historic era with significant infrastructure and investment projects occurring as the Chinese consumer society substantially expands. These simultaneous trends require that China commit to the securitization and protection of IP rights to sustain its rapid economic growth.

Trademark, Labor Law, And Antitrust, Oh My!, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

I am allergic to antitrust law, but after reading Hiba Hafiz’s recent article, I understand that my aversion is problematic. This paper combines an analysis of trademark law, labor law, and antitrust law to explain how employers exploit trademark law protections and defenses to control labor markets and underpay and under-protect workers. For most IP lawyers and professors, this article will open our minds to some collateral effects of trademark law’s consumer protection rationale on other areas of law with important consequences for economic and social policies.

Protecting Patent Owners From Infringement By The States: Will The Intellectual Property Rights Restoration Act Of 1999 Finally Satisfy The Court?, Brandon White

Akron Law Review

The Intellectual Property Rights Restoration Act of 1999 (IPRRA), a Senate Bill currently making its way through Congress, seeks to provide a remedy for patent infringement by the states that Supreme Court will find constitutional. In this Comment, Part II will explore the history of state sovereign immunity under both the Eleventh Amendment and the common law. Part III examines Senate Bill 1835, also known as the Intellectual Property Rights Restoration Act of 1999. Part III looks at not only the substantive provisions of the IPRRA, but also at the legal arguments and policy concerns that support the Act. Part …

Intellectual Property Through A Non-Western Lens: Patents In Islamic Law, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Georgia State University Law Review

The intersection of secular, Western intellectual property law and Islamic law is undertheorized in legal scholarship. Yet the nascent and developing non-Western law of one form of intellectual property—patents—in Islamic legal systems is profoundly important for transformational innovation and economic development initiatives of Muslim-majority countries that comprise nearly one-fifth of the world’s population.

Recent scholarship highlights the tensions of intellectual property in Islamic law because religious considerations in an Islamic society do not fully align with Western notions of patents. As Islamic legal systems have begun to embrace patents in recent decades, theories of patents have presented conceptual and theological …

Governing The Unknown: How The Development Of Intellectual Property Law In Space Will Shape The Next Great Era Of Exploration, Exploitation, And Invention, Lauren Peterson

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property, Secrets, And Declassified Information. Mastering United States Government Information: Sources And Services, Christopher C. Brown, Libraries Unlimited, 2020., Suzanne Reinman

Journal of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

No abstract provided.

Code Ownership : Plagiarism And Use, Alexis Nicole Amore

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Technology is moving at unmeasurable rates to that of law. Ownership rights and legality become harder to grasp distant theories. With community code-sharing and limiting language structures, when does code become plagiarized or entity-owned? The disciplines of Cyberlaw and computer science are used to provide a better understanding.

The Cyberlaw discipline explores how jurisdiction views cyberspace, source code, and source code’s placement within legislation. Due to cyberspace’s ever-evolving nature, litigation struggles to encompass the possibilities within it. Computer science delves into theory-based excursions that define the law’s shape in the cyber realm. It bolsters the possibility of implementing progressive legislation …

Note: Patentability Of 3d Printed Biomaterials, Nicole Barba

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

The Congressional criteria for patentability, detailed in 35 U.S.C §§101-03, states that an invention must be novel, useful, and nonobvious. In addition to these requirements, the Judiciary requires that the invention not be classified as a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea. The purpose of each of these criterion is to ensure that patents are granted only to inventions that “promote the Progress of . . . useful Arts.” As new technologies emerge, it is unclear whether these judicially created criteria still serve that purpose or whether the criteria are overly expansive such that truly useful inventions are …

New Innovation Models In Medical Ai, Nicholson Price Ii, Rachel Sachs, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Law & Economics Working Papers

In recent years, scientists and researchers have devoted considerable resources to developing medical artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Many of these technologies—particularly those which resemble traditional medical devices in their functions—have received substantial attention in the legal and policy literature. But other types of novel AI technologies, such as those that relate to quality improvement and optimizing use of scarce facilities, have been largely absent from the discussion thus far. These AI innovations have the potential to shed light on important aspects of health innovation policy. First, these AI innovations interact less with the legal regimes that scholars traditionally conceive of …

United States Supreme Court Ip Cases, 1810–2019: Measuring & Mapping The Citation Networks, Joseph Scott Miller

Catholic University Law Review

Intellectual property law in the United States, though shaped by key statutes, has long been a common-law field to a great degree. Many decades of decisional law flesh out the meaning of broad-textured, sparely worded statutes. Given the key roles of patent law and copyright law, both federal, the Supreme Court of the United States is i.p. law’s leading apex court. What are the major topical currents in the Supreme Court’s i.p. cases, both now and over the course of the Court’s work? This study uses network-analysis tools to measure and map the entirety of the Court’s i.p. jurisprudence. It …

The Extent Of Application Of The General Rules For The Protection Of Intellectual Works Stored Through Cloud Computing: A Study In Uae Legislation, Alaa Khasawneh

UAEU Law Journal

This research focuses on the most important legal problems raised by cloud computing services and its applications, especially the protection of content stored through these applications. Some legislations have organized these risks with special laws relating to personal data. The study concluded that the Emirati legislator should trait the legal aspects of cloud computing and create its own legal framework.

Keywords: Cloud computing, intellectual property, terms of service.

Evidence-Based Patent Damages, Taorui Guan

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Critical Race Theory As Intellectual Property Methodology, Anjali Vats, Deidre A. Keller

Book Chapters

This chapter traces the emergence of Critical Race Intellectual Property (CRTIP) as a distinct area of study and activism that builds on the work of Critical Legal Studies and Critical Intellectual Property scholars. Invested in the workings of power - but with particular intersectional attentiveness to race - Critical Intellectual Property works to imagine new, often more socially just, forms of knowledge produce. In this brief chapter, we lay out the origins of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its central methods, articulate a vision of CRT, and contemplate how CRT's interdisciplinary and transnational methods might apply to intellectual property. In …

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana S. Rutschman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socioeconomic conditions that affect health risks and health outcomes across the world. The World Health Organization defines these determinants as “forces and systems” consisting of “factors combin[ing] together to affect the health of individuals and communities.” Frameworks relying on determinants of health have been widely adopted by countries in the global South and North alike, as well as international institutional players, several of which are direct or indirect players in transnational intellectual property (IP) policymaking. Issues raised by the implementation of IP policies, however, are …

Attitudes Towards Ip Present Among Seattle Craft Breweries, Zahr K. Said

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Research Patent, Sean B. Seymore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The patent system gives courts the discretion to tailor patentability standards flexibly across technologies to provide optimal incentives for innovation. For chemical inventions, the courts deem them unpatentable if the chemical lacks a practical, non-research-based use at the time patent protection is sought. The fear is that an early-stage patent on a research input would confer too much control over yet-unknown uses for the chemical, thereby potentially hindering downstream innovation. Yet, denying patents on research inputs can frustrate patent law's broad goal of protecting and promoting scientific and technological advances.

This Article addresses this problem by proposing a new form …

Mark Of The Devil: The University As Brand Bully, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, universities have been accused in news stories of becoming “trademark bullies,” entities that use their trademarks to harass and intimidate beyond what the law can reasonably be interpreted to allow. Universities have also intensified efforts to gain expansive new marks. The Ohio State University’s attempt to trademark the word “the” is probably the most notorious. There has also been criticism of universities’ attempts to use their trademarks to police clearly legal speech about their activities. But beyond provocative anecdotes, how can one assess whether a particular university is truly bullying, since there are entirely legitimate reasons for …

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socio-economic conditions that affect health risks and health outcomes across the world. The World Health Organization defines these determinants as “forces and systems” consisting of “factors combin[ing] together to affect the health of individuals and communities.” Frameworks relying on determinants of health have been widely adopted by countries in the global South and North alike, as well as international institutional players, several of which are direct or indirect players in transnational intellectual property (IP) policymaking. Issues raised by the implementation of IP policies, however, are …

We're All Pirates Now: Making Do In A Precarious Ip Ecosystem, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Fifteen years after the Piracy Paradox explained how most anti-copying protection is unnecessary for a thriving fashion industry, we face another piracy paradox: with broader and stronger IP laws and a digital economy in which IP enforcement is more draconian than ever, what explains the ubiquity of everyday copying, sharing, re-making and re-mixing practices that are the life blood of the internet's expressive and innovative ecosystems? Drawing on empirical data from a decade of research, this short essay provides two examples of this "new piracy paradox": a legal regime that ostensibly punishes piracy in a culture in which it is …

The Sword Of Damocles: How The Fair Use Defense Application Affects The Computer Programming Area, Ziyi Gao

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property And Ethnography: A Qualitative Research Approach, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter describes the processes of and justifications for qualitative empirical research in intellectual property (IP) as compared to other research methods, such as quantitative empirical approaches and theoretical economic analyses of law. It provides examples of these research methods, explains the reasons for pursuing a qualitative approach, and details a qualitative research agenda in the context of intellectual property law, as well as a step-by-step method of data collection and data analysis.

Trademarks As Surveillance Transparency, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We know very little about the technologies that watch us. From cell site simulators to predictive policing algorithms, the lack of transparency around surveillance technologies makes it difficult for the public to engage in meaningful oversight. Legal scholars have critiqued various corporate and law enforcement justifications for surveillance opacity, including contract and intellectual property law. But the public needs a free, public, and easily accessible source of information about corporate technologies that might be used to watch us. To date, the literature has overlooked a free, extensive, and easily accessible source of information about surveillance technologies hidden in plain sight: …

The Intellectual Property Of Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The response to COVID-19 is indissolubly tied to intellectual property. In an increasingly globalized world in which infectious disease pathogens travel faster and wider than before, the development of vaccines, treatments and other forms of medical technology has become an integral part of public health preparedness and response frameworks. The development of these technologies, and to a certain extent the allocation and distribution of resulting outputs, is informed by intellectual property regimes. These regimes influence the commitment of R&D resources, shape scientific collaborations and, in some cases, may condition the widespread availability of emerging technologies. As seen throughout this chapter, …

The Law Of Employee Data: Privacy, Property, Governance, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The availability of data related to the employment relationship has ballooned into an unruly mass of personal characteristics, performance metrics, biometric recordings, and creative output. The law governing this collection of information has been awkwardly split between privacy regulations and intellectual property rights, with employees generally losing on both ends. This Article rejects a binary approach that either carves out private spaces ineffectually or renders data into isolated pieces of ownership. Instead, the law should implement a hybrid system that provides workers with continuing input and control without blocking efforts at joint production. In addition, employers should have fiduciary responsibilities …