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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Costs Of Trademarking Dolls, Jessica Silbey
The Costs Of Trademarking Dolls, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Curtin’s article, Zombie Cinderella and the Undead Public Domain, takes a recent case from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) as the basis for an argument that trademark doctrine needs stronger protection against the exclusive commercial appropriation of characters that are in the public domain. In that case, a doll manufacturer sought to register the term “Zombie Cinderella” for a doll that was zombie-ish and princess-like. The examiner refused registration because the term “Zombie Cinderella” for this kind of doll was confusingly similar to the mark for Walt Disney’s Cinderella doll. Although the TTAB overturned the examiner’s …
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, David Fagundes
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, David Fagundes
Faculty Scholarship
Numerous recent cases illustrate that copyright owners sue for infringement even when an unauthorized use of their work causes them no economic harm. This presents a puzzle from the perspective of copyright theory as well as a serious social problem, since infringement suits designed to remedy non-economic harms tend to stifle rather than encourage creative production. While much scholarship has critiqued copyright’s economic theory from the perspective of authors’ incentives to create, ours is the first to explore this issue from the perspective of owners’ motivations to sue for infringement. We turn to moral psychology, and in particular to moral …
What's A Name Worth?: Experimental Tests Of The Value Of Attribution In Intellectual Property, Christopher Jon Sprigman, Christopher Buccafusco, Zachary C. Burns
What's A Name Worth?: Experimental Tests Of The Value Of Attribution In Intellectual Property, Christopher Jon Sprigman, Christopher Buccafusco, Zachary C. Burns
Faculty Scholarship
Despite considerable research suggesting that creators value attribution – i.e., being named as the creator of a work – U.S. intellectual property (IP) law does not provide a right to attribution to the vast majority of creators. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, many European countries give creators, at least in their copyright laws, much stronger rights to attribution. At first blush it may seem that the U.S. has gotten it wrong, and the Europeans have made a better policy choice in providing to creators a right that they value. But for reasons we will explain in this …
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman
Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman
Faculty Scholarship
In this article we report on the results of an experiment we performed to determine whether transactions in intellectual property (IP) are subject to the valuation anomalies commonly referred to as “endowment effects”. Traditional conceptions of the value of IP rely on assumptions about human rationality derived from classical economics. The law assumes that when people make decisions about buying, selling, and licensing IP they do so with fixed, context-independent preferences. Over the past several decades, this rational actor model of classical economics has come under attack by behavioral data showing that people do not always make strictly rational decisions. …
Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon
Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …
Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest--Introduction, Wendy J. Gordon
Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest--Introduction, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Ralph Sharp Brown crossed out the "Junior" that followed his name after his father died. In explanation of the hand-altered stationery, he said (if my recollection holds), "I'm the only one left now." Now, after Ralph's death, there may remain no Ralph Sharp Browns. But there are many law teachers who continue to wage the campaign that Ralph made his life work: to save an interdependent society from unnecessary and stagnating restraints on liberty. In the intellectual property area, Ralph sought to teach us that it can be both right and necessary to give individuals the liberty to "reap without …
Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
When competitors engage in unrestrained copying of each others' intangible products, the structure can resemble a prisoner's dilemma in which free choice leads to unnecessarily low individual payoffs and low social welfare. There are many ways to avoid these low payoffs, such as contract enforcement, direct regulation of copying behavior through IP, and direct government subsidies. All of these modes alter the payoff pattern away from prisoner's dilemma.
When should lawmakers place copyright law or other IP law among the prime options to consider?
Because copyright, patent, misappropriation and the like all work through private-property markets, one key is to …