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Full-Text Articles in Law

Everything In Its Right Place: Social Cooperation And Artist Compensation, Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr, Max Berkelhammer, Yochai Benkler Jan 2010

Everything In Its Right Place: Social Cooperation And Artist Compensation, Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr, Max Berkelhammer, Yochai Benkler

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The music industry's crisis response to the Internet has been the primary driver of U.S. copyright policy for over a decade. The core institutional response has been to increase the scope of copyright and the use of litigation, prosecution, and technical control mechanisms for its enforcement. The assumption driving these efforts has been that without heavily-enforced copyright, artists will not be able to make a living from their art. Throughout this period artists have been experimenting with approaches that do not rely on technological or legal enforcement, but on constructing web-based business models that engage fans and rely on voluntary …


Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble Jan 2010

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …


Media-Rich Input Application Liability, David R. Krohn, Pekarek Jan 2010

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 …


Not So Technical: An Analysis Of Federal Circuit Patent Decisions Appealed From The Itc, Holly Lance Jan 2010

Not So Technical: An Analysis Of Federal Circuit Patent Decisions Appealed From The Itc, Holly Lance

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

A widespread perception among the patent law community is that the patent system would be more effective if judges with technical backgrounds and patent law experience decided patent disputes. Proponents believe that if judges all had similar baseline knowledge of technological analysis, there would be more consistency in decision-making, leading to more predictability for parties. Some district courts have unofficially become semi-specialized in patent law disputes, and Congress is debating whether to institute a more formalized Patent Pilot Program in which district court judges specialize in patent law cases. This Note joins the debate and examines patent law cases at …


Patenting By Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Study, Ted Sichelman, Stuart J.H. Graham Jan 2010

Patenting By Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Study, Ted Sichelman, Stuart J.H. Graham

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

[T]he Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation--an organization that studies and promotes entrepreneurship in the United States--funded an effort at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, to undertake the first comprehensive survey of the relationship between patenting and entrepreneurship in the United States. The authors, along with other investigators, administered the survey in 2008 to approximately 15,000 startup and early-stage companies in the biotechnology, medical device, information technology (IT) hardware, and software and Internet sectors. A portion of the survey examined why entrepreneurs, startups, and early-stage companies do (and do not) seek patents. This Article reports and analyzes results from …


Google Adwords: Trademark Infringer Or Trade Liberalizer, Ashley Tan Jan 2010

Google Adwords: Trademark Infringer Or Trade Liberalizer, Ashley Tan

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Google is the world's most preferred search engine, with an audience share of eighty percent of Internet users worldwide. With so many people browsing its search results, Google is a natural advertising vehicle, and it has exploited this quality to become one of the most profitable Internet companies in U.S. history. However, success has not come without controversy, and one of the most significant concerns Google AdWords, which displays keyword-triggered ads and sponsored links alongside non-sponsored search results. AdWords has come under attack in the United States and in the European Union ("EU") for its role in trademark infringement on …