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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

Private Standards In Public Law: Copyright, Lawmaking And The Case Of Accounting, Lawrence A. Cunningham Nov 2005

Private Standards In Public Law: Copyright, Lawmaking And The Case Of Accounting, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Michigan Law Review

Government increasingly leverages its regulatory function by embodying in law standards that are promulgated and copyrighted by nongovernmental organizations. Departures from such standards expose citizens to criminal, civil, and administrative sanctions, yet private actors generate, control, and limit access to them. Despite governmental ambitions, no one is responsible for evaluating the legitimacy of this approach ex ante and no framework exists to facilitate analysis. This Article contributes an analytical framework and proposes institutional mechanisms to implement it. The lack of a comprehensive framework for evaluating copyright to standards embodied in law is surprising because the range of standards potentially affected …


The Changing Meaning Of Patent Claim Terms, Mark A. Lemley Oct 2005

The Changing Meaning Of Patent Claim Terms, Mark A. Lemley

Michigan Law Review

The claims of a patent are central to virtually every aspect of patent law. The claims define the scope of the invention, and their meaning therefore determines both whether a defendant's product infringes a patent and whether the patent is valid. One of the most significant aspects of patent litigation is "claim construction," the process of defining the words of the claim in other, theoretically clearer words. Courts construe the claims of the patent by starting with the plain meaning of their terms as they would be understood by a person having ordinary skill in the art, or PHOSITA. Claim …


An Orphan Works Affirmative Defense To Copyright Infringement Actions, Jerry Brito, Bridget Dooling Sep 2005

An Orphan Works Affirmative Defense To Copyright Infringement Actions, Jerry Brito, Bridget Dooling

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Laurence Peter once said that "[o]riginality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it." Yet that clever quip is itself unoriginal. Although there may be nothing new under the sun--the arrangement of different bits of existing cultural matter in new and interesting combinations is the source of much originality. Yet today much of our cultural raw material is outside the reach of creators because of the orphan works problem. This problem renders untouchable a large swath of existing artistic, literary, and other works because if a work's copyright owner cannot be found to …


Search And Persuasion In Trademark Law, Barton Beebe Aug 2005

Search And Persuasion In Trademark Law, Barton Beebe

Michigan Law Review

The consumer, we are led to believe, is the measure of all things in trademark law. Trademarks exist only to the extent that consumers perceive them as designations of source. Infringement occurs only to the extent that consumers perceive one trademark as referring to the source of another. The most "intellectual" of the intellectual properties, trademarks are a property purely of consumers' minds. The simple idealist ontology underlying trademark law is largely responsible for the law's characteristic instability. Since 1992, the Supreme Court has considered - and in some cases, reconsidered - seven trademark cases. The Court's copyright cases garner …


Supporting Innovation In Targeted Treatments: Licenses Of Right To Nih-Funded Research Tools, Tanuja V. Garde Apr 2005

Supporting Innovation In Targeted Treatments: Licenses Of Right To Nih-Funded Research Tools, Tanuja V. Garde

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Support for new drug development has taken some interesting turns in current patent law jurisprudence. Beginning with the severe curtailment of scope of the common law experimental use doctrine in Madey v. Duke University, and culminating with the recent Supreme Court decision in Merck KGaA v. Integra Lifesciences I, Ltd., broadening the scope of the statutory research exemption, the freedom to conduct experimental research using another's patented inventions becomes dependent in part on the purpose of the research. That the patent at issue in Merck was characterized by the Federal Circuit as being directed to a research tool raised the …


Not All Bad: An Historical Perspective On Software Patents, Martin Campbell-Kelly Apr 2005

Not All Bad: An Historical Perspective On Software Patents, Martin Campbell-Kelly

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Paper places the current debates about software patents in the historical context of patenting in the information technology industries. The first computer-program products were sold in the mid 1960s when software patents were not generally allowed; as a result, trade secrecy became endemic to the software industry. Software products were also protected by copyright, but in practice this offered little protection against most forms of appropriation by reverse engineering or cloning. By the early 1980s a series of landmark cases led to the acceptance of software patents. It is argued that this development was consistent with the patenting of …


God In The Machine: A New Structural Analysis Of Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Matthew Sag Apr 2005

God In The Machine: A New Structural Analysis Of Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Matthew Sag

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Recognition of the structural role of fair use has the potential to mitigate some of the uncertainty of current fair use jurisprudence. The statutory framework for fair use both mitigates and causes uncertainty. It mitigates uncertainty by providing a consistent framework of analysis the four statutory factors. However, when judges apply the statutory factors without articulating or justifying their own assumptions, they increase uncertainty. The statutory factors mean nothing without certain a priori assumptions as to the scope of the copyright owner's rights. A more stable and predictable fair use jurisprudence would begin to emerge if those assumptions were made …


Black Musical Traditions And Copyright Law: Historical Tensions, Candace G. Hines Jan 2005

Black Musical Traditions And Copyright Law: Historical Tensions, Candace G. Hines

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Note begins with a discussion of copyright law and then examines Black musical traditions and how they have conflicted with American copyright law through the years. Part I explains the history of American copyright law and its theoretical underpinnings. Part II relates common Black musical traditions in more detail. Part III illustrates how the foundations of Black musical traditions can be found in Negro Spirituals. Part IV outlines the notion of Black music as it evolved in ragtime. Part V describes how copyright undermined the traditions of blues, jazz, and R&B. Part VI explains how rock 'n' roll's prominence …


Staying Within The Negotiated Framework: Abiding By The Non-Discrimination Clause In Trips Article 27, Kevin J. Nowak Jan 2005

Staying Within The Negotiated Framework: Abiding By The Non-Discrimination Clause In Trips Article 27, Kevin J. Nowak

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note argues that the Panel in Canada-Generic Medicines correctly decided that the non-discrimination clause in Article 27 applies to the exceptions of Articles 30 and 31. Because Article 27 is the guiding force of Section 5, any exceptions to the rights granted under Section 5 must comply with the requirements set forth in Article 27. Although extreme applications of the non-discrimination clause could be limiting upon some exceptions, Articles 30 and 31 were not placed into TRIPs as complete escape clauses from the framework of Section 5. Additionally, the application of the non-discrimination clause to Articles 30 and 31 …


The Problem Of New Uses, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2005

The Problem Of New Uses, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Discovering new uses for drugs that are already on the market seems like it ought to be the low-lying fruit of biopharmaceutical research and development (R&D). Firms have already made significant investments in developing these drugs and bringing them to market, including testing them in clinical trials, shepherding them through the FDA regulatory approval process, building production facilities, and training sales staff to market them to physicians. By this point, the drugs have begun to enjoy goodwill among patients and physicians and casual observations in the course of clinical experience may point to potential new uses. One might expect that …


Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick Jan 2005

Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick

Michigan Law Review

This Note will show that one can read Elsner broadly to encompass both plant-type and widget-type inventions, and that applying Elsner to both plants and widgets is within the current statutory framework and case law. Such a reading would change the § 102 bar for inventions patentable under § 10i29 (hereinafter referred to as "widgets") as well as for plants. Part I of this Note argues that congressional sources require a flexible test-one that does not prejudice any objects under the Patent Act. Part II discusses the judicial interpretation of the Patent Act prior to Elsner in order to argue …