Law Commons^™

Show Me The Money: Determining A Celebrity’S Fair Market Value In A Right Of Publicity Action, Cody Reaves

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As the power of celebrity continues to grow in the age of social media, so too does the price of using a celebrity’s name and likeness to promote a product. With the newfound ease of using Twitter, Facebook, and even print media to use a celebrity’s identity in conjunction with a product or company, right of publicity concerns arise. When a company uses a celebrity’s name and likeness without the celebrity’s authorization to market or sell a product, companies open themselves up to right of publicity suits. Many of these cases settle out of court. But when these cases do …

The Search For A Grand Unified Theory Of Tort Law., Scott Hershovitz

Reviews

Theorists like to do a lot with a little. And not just because simple theories seem more elegant: we deepen our understanding when we learn that disparate phenomena are linked together. In physics, for example, the theory of thermodynamics showed us the relationship between mechanics and heat. In economics, the theory of the firm showed us that, across industries that look nothing alike, a simple principle helps explain the organization of economic activity. Of course, there is no guarantee that the disparate phenomena we suspect are linked actually are. Particle physicists continue to search for a Grand Unified Theory, which …

Common Law Property Metaphors On The Internet: The Real Problem With The Doctrine Of Cybertrespass, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The doctrine of cybertrespass represents one of the most recent attempts by courts to apply concepts and principles from the real world to the virtual world of the Internet. A creation of state common law, the doctrine essentially involved extending the tort of trespass to chattels to the electronic world. Consequently, unauthorized electronic interferences are deemed trespassory intrusions and rendered actionable. The present paper aims to undertake a conceptual study of the evolution of the doctrine, examining the doctrinal modifications courts were required to make to mould the doctrine to meet the specificities of cyberspace. It then uses cybertrespass to …

Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Michigan Law Review

In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …

Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab

Articles

Ronald Coase's essay on "The Problem of Social Cost" introduced the world to transaction costs, and the introduction laid the foundation for an ongoing cottage industry in law and economics. And of all the law-and-economics scholarship built on Coase's insights, perhaps the most widely known and influential contribution has been Calabresi and Melamed's discussion of what they called "property rules" and "liability rules."' Those rules and the methodology behind them are our subjects here. We have a number of objectives, the most basic of which is to provide a much needed primer for those students, scholars, and lawyers who are …

A Bitter Inheritance: East German Real Property And The Supreme Constitutional Court's "Land Reform" Decision Of April 23, 1991, Jonathan J. Doyle

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article briefly examines the principal expropriatory measures undertaken between 1945 and 1989, the agreements between the two German governments relating thereto, and the divisive constitutional issues raised by this fusion of two antithetical legal systems in the area of property law. The text concludes with an analysis of the German Supreme Court's "Land Reform" decision and the juridical controversy surrounding it.

Real Property - Compensation For Abrogation Of A Restrictive Covenant By Public Authority, Howard N. Thiele, Jr. S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

It is the purpose of this comment to examine the legal consequences produced when the tranquility of the residential district is disturbed by governmental action.

Patent Law, John Barker Waite

Books

The comparatively small size of the book is not due to any conscious superficiality of treatment nor omission of pertinent subject matter. It purports to cover only the substantive law of patents, their nature, validity, effect, and their characteristics as property. Matters of procedure in securing patents or suing on them, and the difficult subject of the amount of compensation recoverable by suit, would require a volume for themselves and are not included here. But of the matter which is included, it has been my desire to present every issue which has come before the courts....

This book is intended …