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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Law
Paypal Is New Money: Extending Secondary Copyright Liability Safe Harbors To Online Payment Processors, Erika Douglas
Paypal Is New Money: Extending Secondary Copyright Liability Safe Harbors To Online Payment Processors, Erika Douglas
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has shaped the Internet as we know it. This legislation shields online service providers from secondary copyright infringement liability in exchange for takedown of infringing content of their users. Yet online payment processors, the backbone of $300 billion in U.S. e-commerce, are completely outside of the DMCA’s protection. This Article uses PayPal, the most popular online payment company in the U.S., to illustrate the growing risk of secondary liability for payment processors. First it looks at jurisprudence that expands secondary copyright liability online, and explains how it might be applied to PayPal. Then it …
Interactive Methods And Collaborative Performance: A New Future For Indirect Infringement, Josh Rychlinski
Interactive Methods And Collaborative Performance: A New Future For Indirect Infringement, Josh Rychlinski
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
An individual is liable for patent infringement if he infringes one or more patented claims either directly under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) or indirectly under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) or § 271(c). In 2012, the Federal Circuit clarified its interpretation of § 271(b) and § 271(c) in the case of Akamai v. Limelight. However, the court failed to address issues of “divided” direct infringement, where two or more entities combine and together complete each and every step of a method claim, but no single entity does all of the steps. This Note walks through the history of the judicial interpretation …
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Criminal and civil law differ greatly in their use of the element of intent. The purposes of intent in each legal system are tailored to effectuate very different goals. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S. Ct. 2060 (2011), however, imported a criminal concept of intent--willful blindness--into the statute for patent infringement, a civil offense. This importation of a criminal law concept of intent into the patent statute is novel and calls for examination. This Article compares the purposes behind intent in criminal law with the purposes behind intent in patent law to …
The Endowment Effect In Ip Transactions: The Case Against Debiasing, Ofer Tur-Sinai
The Endowment Effect In Ip Transactions: The Case Against Debiasing, Ofer Tur-Sinai
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Article contains a critical discussion of recent studies by Christopher Buccafusco and Christopher Sprigman concerning the role of the endowment effect in intellectual property transactions. According to the thesis presented in these studies, the existence of an endowment effect in the markets for IP goods causes inefficiencies. In order to counteract such inefficiencies, the authors argue, IP rights must be weakened in various ways, including shifting toward liability rules, adding formalities in copyright law, and expanding the fair use doctrine. The thesis as presented is groundbreaking and would have broad implications. This Article, however, points out several shortcomings of …
Media-Rich Input Application Liability, David R. Krohn, Pekarek
Media-Rich Input Application Liability, David R. Krohn, Pekarek
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Until recently, media-rich online interactions were mostly unidirectional: multimedia content was delivered by the service provider to the user. Input from the user came almost exclusively in the form of text. Even when searching the Internet for images or audio, a user typically entered text into a search engine. In addition, search engines indexed multimedia content by analyzing not the content itself but the text surrounding it. This is rapidly changing. With the rise of multimedia-capable smartphones and wireless broadband, applications that allow users to search using non-textual inputs are quickly becoming popular. These applications go much further than simply …
Optimal Fines For False Patent Marking, Thomas F. Cotter
Optimal Fines For False Patent Marking, Thomas F. Cotter
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Essay proposes that, in order to avoid imposing arbitrary (and perhaps unnecessarily large) fines for false patent marking, courts should seek guidance in the law of remedies for false advertising and copyright infringement. In particular, courts should attempt to approximate the social harm caused by actionable false marking by taking into account (1) the plaintiff's loss (if any) and the defendant's gain (if any) attributable to the false marking at issue; (2) the plausibility of substantial but less easily quantifiable harms to consumers and to nonparty competitors; and (3) the risks, on the one hand, of underdeterring statutory violations …
Generic Preemption: Applying Conflict Preemption After Wyeth V. Levine, Hannah B. Murray
Generic Preemption: Applying Conflict Preemption After Wyeth V. Levine, Hannah B. Murray
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
If a generic manufacturer does not have control over its safety warnings, can it comply with the obligations posed by state tort liability? State failure-to-warn actions evaluate whether a product manufacturer has met its obligation to warn consumers about known dangers associated with its product. In essence, if a manufacturer knows about a potentially dangerous outcome, it has a duty to warn its consumers. If the generic manufacturer can comply with a state duty to warn only by changing a label that the FDA will not allow it to change, it becomes impossible for the corporation to meet both requirements. …
Platitudes About Product Stewardship In Torts: Continuing Drug Research And Education, Lars Noah
Platitudes About Product Stewardship In Torts: Continuing Drug Research And Education, Lars Noah
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Article focuses on one emerging aspect of tort litigation against pharmaceutical manufacturers that, if it gained traction, portends a dramatic (and potentially counterproductive) expansion in the prescription drug industry's exposure to liability. The traditional theories of products liability--mismanufacture, defective design, and inadequate warnings--no longer exhaust the potential obligations of sellers. In addition to increasingly popular claims of misrepresentation and negligent marketing, which seem more like extensions of the three defect categories than entirely novel theories, a growing chorus of commentators would impose on pharmaceutical manufacturers a broader duty to test and educate (aspects of what they call an obligation …
When And How To Defer To The Fda: Learning From Michigan's Regulatory Compliance Defense, Jason C. Miller
When And How To Defer To The Fda: Learning From Michigan's Regulatory Compliance Defense, Jason C. Miller
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Michigan's regulatory compliance defense properly recognizes that an FDA-approved drug carrying an FDA-approved label should not be considered defective. However, the statute's absolute immunity provides no compensation for injured parties in any circumstance, including situations where the FDA process has failed. Nevertheless, it is possible to treat the FDA's approval as significant without eliminating the possibility of all state actions against drug makers by providing a litigation back-up through state attorneys general ("AGs"). This Note examines the question of FDA approval in state tort actions in Part I, discusses Michigan's answer to that question in Part II, and offers a …
Hiding Behind Nationality: The Temporary Presence Exception And Patent Infringement Avoidance, J. Jonas Anderson
Hiding Behind Nationality: The Temporary Presence Exception And Patent Infringement Avoidance, J. Jonas Anderson
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Article argues that the temporary presence exception was not designed to allow conveyance owners the ability to select the most optimal patent system under which to be subject. It also examines the ramifications of the temporary presence exception on international commerce and concludes that increased use of the exception may result in reduced values for patents relating to international conveyances, reduced incentives to invest in and develop technologies in international conveyances, and a decrease in the quality of various domestic patent systems worldwide. Finally, this Article proposes a solution to these problems. The temporary presence exception has received some …
Software Development As An Antitrust Remedy: Lessons From The Enforcement Of The Microsoft Communications Protocol Licensing Requirement , William H. Page, Seldon J. Childers
Software Development As An Antitrust Remedy: Lessons From The Enforcement Of The Microsoft Communications Protocol Licensing Requirement , William H. Page, Seldon J. Childers
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
An important provision in each of the final judgments in the government's Microsoft antitrust case requires Microsoft to "make available" to software developers the communications protocols that Windows client operating systems use to interoperate "natively" (that is, without adding software) with Microsoft server operating systems in corporate networks or over the Internet. The short-term goal of the provision is to allow developers, as licensees of the protocols, to write applications for non-Microsoft server operating systems that interoperate with Windows client computers in the same ways that applications written for Microsoft's server operating systems interoperate with Windows clients. The long-term goal …
Common Law Property Metaphors On The Internet: The Real Problem With The Doctrine Of Cybertrespass, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
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 …
From The Cluetrain To The Panopticon: Isp Activity Characterization And Control Of Internet Communications, Eric Evans
From The Cluetrain To The Panopticon: Isp Activity Characterization And Control Of Internet Communications, Eric Evans
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
If ISPs are exposed to liability for forwarding others' messages--messages originating with other ISPs or with the ISP's own users--the norm of universal mutual message forwarding that underlies the present operation of the Internet will be threatened. This Note will argue that society presently confronts a choice between a common carrier Internet characterized by universal mutual message forwarding and a monitored and controlled Internet. Part I will describe the underlying rules that govern ISPs' liability for their users' actions. Part II will argue that the present statutory regime governing ISPs' liability for users' copyright infringement includes elements that provide ISPs …
Snake-Oil Security Claims The Systematic Misrepresentation Of Product Security In The E-Commerce Arena, John R. Michener, Steven D. Mohan, James B. Astrachan, David R. Hale
Snake-Oil Security Claims The Systematic Misrepresentation Of Product Security In The E-Commerce Arena, John R. Michener, Steven D. Mohan, James B. Astrachan, David R. Hale
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The modern commercial systems and software industry in the United States have grown up in a snake-oil salesman's paradise. The largest sector of this industry by far is composed of standard commercial systems that are marketed to provide specified functionality (e.g. Internet web server, firewall, router, etc.) Such products are generally provided with a blanket disclaimer stating that the purchaser must evaluate the suitability of the product for use, and that the user assumes all liability for product behavior. In general, users cannot evaluate and cannot be expected to evaluate the security claims of a product. The ability to analyze …
Plotting The Return Of An Ancient Tort To Cyberspace: Towards A New Federal Standard Of Responsibility For Defamation For Internet Service Providers, Christopher Butler
Plotting The Return Of An Ancient Tort To Cyberspace: Towards A New Federal Standard Of Responsibility For Defamation For Internet Service Providers, Christopher Butler
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Though the rapid development of the Internet has created a fertile ground for legal innovation, more often than not legislators and courts have sought to address this relatively new medium by attempting to squeeze it into precedents and paradigms better suited to older forms of communication, technology, and media. Part I of this article looks back at the courts' initial efforts at addressing defamation via the Internet. From the start the courts attempted to fit the role of the ISP into the common law's categorizing of print media as either "publishers" or "distributors" of information. One court's misstep in overextending …
Schizophrenia Among Carriers: How Common And Private Carriers Trade Places, Rob Frieden
Schizophrenia Among Carriers: How Common And Private Carriers Trade Places, Rob Frieden
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This article will examine court cases and actions by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that distort the traditional concepts of common and private carriage by establishing new rights and responsibilities previously applicable to the other category of carrier. This article will also consider the feasibility of (a) maintaining the traditional common carrier regulatory model and (b) continuing the application of that model to basic services provided by local exchange carriers (LECs). This is especially important as LECs qualify to become private carriers tapping new market opportunities, even within the same geographical region where they provide basic services. Finally, this article …