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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Immanent Rationality Of Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Apr 2017

The Immanent Rationality Of Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Michigan Law Review

Review of What’s Wrong with Copying? by Abraham Drassinower.


Beyond Eureka: What Creators Want (Freedom, Credit, And Audiences) And How Intellectual Property Can Better Give It To Them (By Supporting, Sharing, Licensing, And Attribution), Colleen Chien Jan 2016

Beyond Eureka: What Creators Want (Freedom, Credit, And Audiences) And How Intellectual Property Can Better Give It To Them (By Supporting, Sharing, Licensing, And Attribution), Colleen Chien

Michigan Law Review

In the theater of the courtroom or the rough and tumble arena of intellectual property policymaking, the day-to-day lives of creators are rarely presented. We often instead see one-dimensional vignettes, for example, “the new artist or band that has just released their [sic] first single and will not be paid for its success,” described on Taylor Swift’s Tumblr last summer when she initially withdrew from Apple’s music streaming service. While instructive, this description leaves out that Swift and other artists have long relied on “free play” mediums like radio and, more recently, YouTube to develop, not cannibalize, their audiences and …


Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans Feb 2008

Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans

Michigan Law Review

Section 337 of the Tarif Act of 1930 empowers the United States International Trade Commission to investigate imports to ensure imports do not infringe on U.S. trademarks. The Commission permits patent, copyright, and trademark owners to notify the Commission of possibly infringing imports and to obtain exclusion orders that prevent importation of products that infringe their intellectual property. The total number of investigations increased from 1996 to 2005, yet the proportion of respondent defaults rose as well. The increase in defaults suggests there is some systemic difficulty in ensuring full participation. This Note argues that the res judicata effects of …


"By Night She Fought For Fair Use": Restoring The Integrity Of Copyright Law, One Comic-Book Reader At A Time, Jessica Sawyer Wang Apr 2007

"By Night She Fought For Fair Use": Restoring The Integrity Of Copyright Law, One Comic-Book Reader At A Time, Jessica Sawyer Wang

Michigan Law Review

Students of copyright law quickly learn that the subject is counterintuitive. One of the first revelations of this is-somewhat alarmingly-the purpose of copyright itself. Contrary to popular belief, copyright is not just about protecting an artist's creation, but sharing it. Simultaneously protecting a work and sharing it helps to fulfill the Constitution's mandate that Congress "promote the Progress of Science ... by securing for limited Times to Authors ... the exclusive Right to their ... Writings." In other words, Congress is to promote learning and the advancement of our culture. The symbiosis of protecting and sharing is effected through the …


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 …


Copyright's Communications Policy, Timothy Wu Nov 2004

Copyright's Communications Policy, Timothy Wu

Michigan Law Review

There is something for everyone to dislike about early twenty-first century copyright. Owners of content say that newer and better technologies have made it too easy to be a pirate. Easy copying, they say, threatens the basic incentive to create new works; new rights and remedies are needed to restore the balance. Academic critics instead complain that a growing copyright gives content owners dangerous levels of control over expressive works. In one version of this argument, this growth threatens the creativity and progress that copyright is supposed to foster; in another, it represents an "enclosure movement" that threatens basic freedoms …


Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky Oct 2002

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 …


Shemel & Krasilovsky: This Business Of Music, Robert A. Choate Jan 1965

Shemel & Krasilovsky: This Business Of Music, Robert A. Choate

Michigan Law Review

A Review of This Business of Music by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky


Copyrights-Limitations On Proprietor's Exclusive Right To Vend, David M. Ebel May 1964

Copyrights-Limitations On Proprietor's Exclusive Right To Vend, David M. Ebel

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff was the sole proprietor of copyrights on several educational toys. It had ordered a large number of these toys to be made by defendant manufacturer, but refused to accept them when tendered, claiming they were so defective in quality that their sale would impair plaintiff's reputation. When defendant manufacturer began selling the rejected toys to the co-defendants in order to recover its own investment in them, the plaintiff obtained a temporary restraining order against all defendants prohibiting further sales of the toys pending a determination of a motion for permanent injunction. The district court granted a preliminary injunction of …


Literary And Artistic Property -- Common-Law Copyright-- Filing Of Architectural Plans In A Public Office As Publication, Judd L. Bacon S.Ed. Nov 1960

Literary And Artistic Property -- Common-Law Copyright-- Filing Of Architectural Plans In A Public Office As Publication, Judd L. Bacon S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff home designer prepared plans for a client and filed a copy in a county office as required by ordinance in order to obtain a building permit. Defendant copied and used these plans without plaintiff's consent. In an action under a state statute codifying the common-law right of designers to the exclusive ownership of their unpublished designs, the lower court held for defendant, finding plaintiff's copyright to have been destroyed by publication. On appeal, held, reversed. The filing of architectural plans in a public office in order to secure a building permit does not constitute a publication of them …


Copryright - Infringement - Parody Of Dramatic Production Held Not To Be Fair Use, William J. Wise S.Ed. Jun 1958

Copryright - Infringement - Parody Of Dramatic Production Held Not To Be Fair Use, William J. Wise S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Prior to December 1938, Patrick Hamilton wrote an original play entitled "Gaslight" which subsequently was published, performed and protected by copyright in both England and the United States. Loew's acquired exclusive motion picture rights to the play on October 7, 1942, and produced an original feature-length motion picture photoplay of the drama, also entitled "Gaslight." In 1945 Jack Benny sought and received permission to produce a 15-minute parody of the motion picture for his radio program. In 1953, without securing Loew's permission, Benny produced a 15-minute filmed parody of the motion picture for his television program. It was entitled "Autolight" …


Coming Into Equity With Clean Hands, Zechariah Chafee, Jr. Jun 1949

Coming Into Equity With Clean Hands, Zechariah Chafee, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

The preceding article proposed to examine eighteen differing groups of cases which are commonly supposed to present the clean hands doctrine as a maxim of equity, and then proceeded to consider eight such groups. Ten groups still require attention. The first five of those already considered fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of equity, and the next three within the concurrent jurisdiction, which is continued for a considerable part of the present article. After discussing suits for specific performance of unfair contracts and of illegal contracts, I dealt with miscellaneous tort suits by a person charged with crime. We now turn …


Trade Restraints- Equitable Servitude On Chattels - Radio Broadcast Of Electrical Transcriptions, Roy L. Steinheimer Nov 1939

Trade Restraints- Equitable Servitude On Chattels - Radio Broadcast Of Electrical Transcriptions, Roy L. Steinheimer

Michigan Law Review

A popular orchestra leader made certain electrical transcriptions (not records) of unique interpretations of different musical numbers which were distributed, for a consideration, for radio broadcast on the Ford Motor Program. A notice appears on the transcription that it is to be used only by a distributee station and then only on the Ford Program. Defendant, who is not a distributee, broadcast one of these transcriptions without the plaintiff's consent. Plaintiff sued to enjoin rendition of the transcriptions. Held, that the injunction should be granted because there was a proprietary interest in the plaintiff's rendition of these musical numbers, …


Taxation-Federal Instrumentalities-Exemption From State Tax Nov 1932

Taxation-Federal Instrumentalities-Exemption From State Tax

Michigan Law Review

Appellant, a New York corporation which is engaged in Georgia in licensing copyrighted motion pictures, brought suit to restrain a Georgia tax upon the gross receipts of royalties. Appellant urged the invalidity of the tax upon the ground that copyrights are instrumentalities of the United States. The supreme court of Georgia ruled that the suit should be dismissed. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States it was held, in Fox Film Corporation v. Doyal, that a state tax on royalties derived from copyrights is valid.


Some Historical Matter Concerning Literary Property, Edward S. Rogers Dec 1908

Some Historical Matter Concerning Literary Property, Edward S. Rogers

Michigan Law Review

The notion of property in published literary works was of gradual development. One may search in vain through classical literature and Roman law to find anything in the nature of copyright. Hearty condemnation of plagiarism is to be found. Stealing another man's labor and passing it off as one's own was a literary crime, but neither that nor open piracy seems to have been a matter of which the law took cognizance. Before the invention of printing, making manuscript copies of a book was such a laborious and time-consuming task that an ancient author must have felt sufficiently repaid if …