Law Commons^™

We Are Never Getting Back Together: A Statutory Framework For Reconciling Artist/Label Relationships, Harrison Simons

Washington Law Review Online

Taylor Swift could tell you a thing or two about record label drama. Artists like Swift who want to break into the big leagues and top the charts must rely on record labels’ deep pockets and institutional knowledge to do so. But artists, especially young ones, are often asked to sign deals with labels that leave them with little control over their careers. For many, the risk is worth the reward. However, many others come to regret their decision, with careers that languish or sputter out in label purgatory. Anyone with an ear for the music industry knows that artist-label …

The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro

Washington Law Review

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

Super-Statutory Contracting, Kristelia A. García

Washington Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that property rules induce more—and more efficient—contracting, and that when faced with rigid property rules, intellectual property owners will contract into more flexible liability rules. A series of recent, private copyright deals show some intellectual property owners doing just the opposite: faced with statutory liability rules, they are contracting for more protection than that dictated by law, something this Article calls “super-statutory contracting”—either by opting for a stronger, more tailored liability rule, or by contracting into property rule protection. Through a series of deal analyses, this Article explores this counterintuitive phenomenon, and updates seminal thinking on …

Contracts Mattered As Much As Copyrights, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Scholars have begun to appreciate the fundamental role that contracts played in the development of copyrights. Contracts gave copyrights vitalilty. This article explores the network of book publishing contracts that formed the legal infrastructure for a pre-modern “internet” at the dawn of copyright law in Great Britain in the eighteenth century. Drawing on insights from archival research, the article shows how this network of copyright contracts advanced an important goal of copyright: the spread of ideas and information throughout all parts of society. Appreciating the historical significance of copyright contracts provides valuable context for modern debates about copyright policy. Indeed, …

Enforcement Of Open Source Software Licenses: The Mdy Trio's Inconvenient Compliations, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The Federal Circuit’s ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer [535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008)] finally settled the question of whether open source licenses are enforceable. Unfortunately, three recent cases from the Ninth Circuit have complicated matters. I call this trio of cases the “MDY Trio” in honor of the Ninth Circuit’s prior trio of licensing cases known as the “MAI Trio.”

On the surface, the MDY Trio provides a boost for the enforceability of software licenses, but the MDY Trio also creates two significant complications for open source licenses. First, the MDY Trio’s test for distinguishing between licenses and copyright …

Getting Serious About User-Friendly Mass Market Licensing For Software, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Software publishers use standard form end user licenses (“EULAs”) in mass market transactions on a regular basis. Most software users find EULAs perplexing and generally ignore them. Scholars, however, have focused on them intently. In the past twenty years over a hundred scholarly articles have been written on the subject. Most of these articles criticize EULAs and argue that courts should not enforce them. In their critique of EULAs, some scholars examine the adequacy of the offer, acceptance, and consideration. Others discuss EULAs as part of the troublesome issue of standard form contracting, and whether standard forms, on balance, harm …

International Jurisdiction And Enforcement Of Judgments In The Era Of Global Networks: Irrelevance Of, Goals For, And Comments On The Current Proposals, Jonathan A. Franklin, Roberta J. Morris

Librarians' Articles

Last fall a Symposium at Chicago-Kent College of Law entitled "Constructing International Intellectual Property Law: The Role of National Courts," held on October 18-19, 2001, brought together scholars interested in a group of problems related to the relationship between harmonized rules of international civil procedure and diverse nationally-based rules of intellectual property. Subsequently, extensive discussions between the authors developed this Article into its present form.

Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.

The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …

The New Contract: Welfare Reform, Devolution, And Due Process, Christine N. Cimini

Articles

This Article analyzes the due process implications of the change in welfare administration from a federal statutory entitlement model to the devolved contractual model and posits that, despite the changes, due process protections still exist. These protections arise from the private law of contracts on two different levels. The first level is the macro, or implied, contract, that I refer to as the social contract between the government and the populace. The existence of this social contract is evidenced in numerous sources including: political theories that explore the use of governmental authority; foundational democratic legal sources, such as the Declaration …

Notes On The Reliance Interest, Robert Birmingham

Washington Law Review

The topic is Contract Damages. The interests are defined by how we protect them. Imagine a breaching promisor. We protect the reliance interest of the promisee by requiring the promisor to put her in a position as good as she would have been in had the parties not contracted. The other interests are the restitution interest, which we protect by requiring the promisor to give back what the promisee has given him; and the expectation interest, which we protect by requiring the promisor to put the promisee in a position as good as she would have been in had he …

Washington Timber Deeds And Contracts, Ralph W. Johnson

Articles

The law of Washington concerning the interests conveyed by timber deeds and contracts is foggy. Many vital questions are still totally unanswered, or have been left in confusion, by the cases in point. The principal area of doubt revolves around the question of whether standing timber, which has been sold separately from the land on which it stands, is realty or personalty. The answer is vital for many reasons. It determines whether a husband has power as manager of the community to convey community-owned timber without his wife's signature, which statute of frauds applies to a timber transaction, which recording …

Washington Timber Deeds And Contracts, Ralph W. Johnson

Articles

The law of Washington concerning the interests conveyed by timber deeds and contracts is foggy. Many vital questions are still totally unanswered, or have been left in confusion, by the cases in point. The principal area of doubt revolves around the question of whether standing timber, which has been sold separately from the land on which it stands, is realty or personalty. The answer is vital for many reasons. It determines whether a husband has power as manager of the community to convey community-owned timber without his wife's signature, which statute of frauds applies to a timber transaction, which recording …

Assumption Of Liability By Implication, Leo D. Bloch

Washington Law Review

In the case of the National Credit Company v. Casco Company, the plaintiff's assignor sold to the Avalon Theatre Company, defendant's lessee, a neon electric sign under a conditional sales contract. To secure rental payments, defendant secured from the Theatre Company, its lessee, a chattel mortgage on all the furniture and fixtures owned by the lessee located upon the premises. Upon default in payment, defendant foreclosed the mortgage and purchased at the foreclosure sale, defendant receiving from the sheriff a bill of sale of all the property covered by the chattel mortgage, including the neon sign. Subsequently, defendant leased the …

Rights And Estates Of Vendor And Vendee Under An Executory Contract For The Sale Of Real Property, P. John Lichty

Washington Law Review

No abstract provided.