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Full-Text Articles in Law

"Does That Sound Familiar?": Creators' Liability For Unconscious Copyright Infringement, Christopher B. Jaeger Nov 2008

"Does That Sound Familiar?": Creators' Liability For Unconscious Copyright Infringement, Christopher B. Jaeger

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1953, a twenty-seven year old man underwent brain surgery to treat the severe epilepsy that had plagued him during his youth. The surgeon, Dr. William Scoville, removed portions of the young man's brain that were involved in memory processing. Most notably, Dr. Scoville removed most of his patient's hippocampus. The surgery left the young man, now known to psychologists as H.M., with anterograde amnesia: he still had a short-term memory, but he was unable to convert any of his short-term memories into new long-term memories. Although H.M. could not form new long-term memories, psychologists found that he still could …


Keynote Lecture For Harmless Boundary Crossings: Their Role In Comparative Institutional Analysis - 2008, Wendy J. Gordon Oct 2008

Keynote Lecture For Harmless Boundary Crossings: Their Role In Comparative Institutional Analysis - 2008, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

One of the things that unifies many of the scholars in IP generally, and in this room in particular, is an interest in what you might call noncommercial models cooperative sharing, peer-to-peer creativity-a yearning for a different kind of life, perhaps, one that's less commercial, more focused on dialogues, both democratic and personal, and a mode of life that emphasizes the process and product of work rather than its monetary payoff. We all know from the work of Teresa Amabile and Alfie Cohen and our own experience that if you are keeping your eye on a monetary goal or getting …


Copyright And Permissions: Sometimes They're The Same, Kopana Terry Oct 2008

Copyright And Permissions: Sometimes They're The Same, Kopana Terry

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.


Big Boi, Dr. Seuss, And The King: Expanding The Constitutional Protections For The Satirical Use Of Famous Trademarks , Aaron Jaroff Feb 2008

Big Boi, Dr. Seuss, And The King: Expanding The Constitutional Protections For The Satirical Use Of Famous Trademarks , Aaron Jaroff

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.


Recording Artists, Work For Hire, Employment, And Appropriation, Matt Stahl Jan 2008

Recording Artists, Work For Hire, Employment, And Appropriation, Matt Stahl

Studio for Law and Culture

Authorship and ownership exist in a curious relation in U.S. copyright law. In theory and common sense, authorship underwrites and is the condition of ownership, but in practice ownership can establish authorship retroactively. Distinctions between proprietary and non-proprietary creative cultural workers, in this view, turn in no essential way on evidence of “creativity” or the investment of “personality” in cultural creation. This paper examines a legislative struggle between recording artists and the recording industry over the status of their stock-in-trade, sound recordings. In 2000, recording artists obtained the repeal of a 1999 law allocating authorship and ownership of recordings to …


Of Maps, Crown Copyright, Research And The Environment, Estelle Derclaye Jan 2008

Of Maps, Crown Copyright, Research And The Environment, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

No abstract provided.


Flashing Badge Co Ltd V Groves: A Step Forward In The Clarification Of The Copyright/Design Interface, Estelle Derclaye Jan 2008

Flashing Badge Co Ltd V Groves: A Step Forward In The Clarification Of The Copyright/Design Interface, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

No abstract provided.


Intellectual Property Rights And Global Warming, Estelle Derclaye Jan 2008

Intellectual Property Rights And Global Warming, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

No abstract provided.


Does The Directive On The Re-Use Of Public Sector Information Affect The State’S Database Sui Generis Right?, Estelle Derclaye Jan 2008

Does The Directive On The Re-Use Of Public Sector Information Affect The State’S Database Sui Generis Right?, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

No abstract provided.


An Intellectual Property Food Fight: Why Copyright Law Should Embrace Culinary Innovation, J. Austin Broussard Jan 2008

An Intellectual Property Food Fight: Why Copyright Law Should Embrace Culinary Innovation, J. Austin Broussard

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In the United States, dining has become an increasingly popular form of leisure and entertainment, generating an estimated $537 billion in 2007. However, dining represents only one aspect of the modern food economy; cooking and dining are regularly featured in newspapers and magazines, while celebrity chefs tout their own brands on television. Eating has been transformed from a mere perfunctory activity into big business. Increasing competition for the attention and money of restaurant patrons has prompted chefs of grande cuisine to differentiate their menus by creating unique dishes. The time and labor that chefs sink into this form of innovation …


User-Generated Content And Virtual Worlds, Greg Lastowka Jan 2008

User-Generated Content And Virtual Worlds, Greg Lastowka

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Many legal commentators have claimed that virtual worlds owe their popularity to their focus on user-generated content and user creativity. While this is true in part and authorial freedom may draw consumers to virtual worlds, user-generated content can also pose risks to virtual world business from both an aesthetic and legal perspective. A significant tension exists between permitting participants to create content freely and building a successful virtual environment. In some instances, user-generated content can overwhelm virtual worlds. The future of user-generated content in virtual worlds is not clear, given the significant practical and legal problems that accompany user-generated content.


Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow Jan 2008

Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The lack of regulation of the production of pornography in the United States leaves pornography performers exposed to substantial risks. Producers of pornography typically respond to attempts to regulate pornography as infringements upon free speech. At the same time, large corporations involved in the production and sale of pornography rely on copyright law's complex regulatory framework to protect their pornographic content from copying and unauthorized distribution. Web 2.0 also facilitates the production and distribution of pornography by individuals. These user-generators produce their own pornography, often looking to monetize their productions themselves via advertising revenues and subscription models. Much like their …


Tactics And Terms In The Negotiation Of Electronic Resource Licenses, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2008

Tactics And Terms In The Negotiation Of Electronic Resource Licenses, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

This chapter introduces the reader to the realm of electronic resource license agreements. It provides the reader with an overview of basic contract law as it relates to electronic resource licensing. The chapter then discusses the electronic resource license negotiation process as well as license agreement term clauses. The aim of this chapter is to provide librarians with an understanding of basic licensing concepts and language in order to aid librarians in the review and negotiation of their own license agreements. The author hopes to impart lessons and tips he has learned in reviewing and negotiating license agreements with a …


Separating The Sony Sheep From The Grokster Goats: Reckoning The Future Business Plans Of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepeneurs, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 2008

Separating The Sony Sheep From The Grokster Goats: Reckoning The Future Business Plans Of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepeneurs, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In MGM v. Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court established that businesses built from the start on inducing copyright infringement will be held liable, as judges will frown on drawing one's start-up capital from other people's copyrights. The Court's elucidation of the elements of inducement suggests that even businesses not initially built on infringement, but in which infringement comes to play an increasingly profitable part, may find themselves liable unless they take good faith measures to forestall infringements. This Article addresses the evolution of the U.S. judge-made rules of secondary liability for copyright infringement, and the possible emergence of an obligation …


Our Uniform Patent System, Clarisa Long Jan 2008

Our Uniform Patent System, Clarisa Long

Faculty Scholarship

Patent reform arouses passions among the affected industries, whether they are plaintiffs or defendants, willing users or unwilling participants in the patent system. The key question, therefore, is: How should we structure the patent system in order to best promote innovation in the U.S. economy?


Rethinking Copyright: Property Through The Lenses Of Unjust Enrichment And Unfair Competition, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Jan 2008

Rethinking Copyright: Property Through The Lenses Of Unjust Enrichment And Unfair Competition, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

For some time now, scholars have come to recognize the existence of numerous structural infirmities deeply embedded within the modern copyright system. Most of these infirmities have been attributed to internal tensions within copyright law and policy, including the competing philosophies of access and control, use and exclusion, and rights and exceptions. Professor Stadler’s insightful article documents these tensions and proposes a new way of mediating them. She argues that copyright law is best understood as instantiating a restriction
on unfair competition and, consequently, that it should do little more than protect creators of original works from “competitive harm” in …


Billowing White Goo, Jessica D. Litman Jan 2008

Billowing White Goo, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

The title of this symposium is the question: "Fair Use: "Incredibly Shrinking" or Extraordinarily Expanding?" I'd argue that the answer to the question is "no." Fair use isn't doing either. The size of the fair use footprint has stayed remarkably constant over the past 30 or even 50 years. What has expanded, extraordinarily, is the size of rights granted by the copyright law. It may seem as if fair use is either expanding or shrinking, because the greater reach of copyright has made a bunch of uses potentially fair that weren't even potentially infringing 50 years ago. In order to …


"See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Hea[R] Me" (And Maybe Smell And Taste Me, Too): I Am A Trademark – A Us Perspective, Jane C. Ginsburg Jan 2008

"See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Hea[R] Me" (And Maybe Smell And Taste Me, Too): I Am A Trademark – A Us Perspective, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The preceding chapter, “Between a sign and a brand,” addresses the current law in the UK and the EU regarding which signs can be a registered trademark, and the scope of protection a trademark receives. Jennifer Davis also considers the extent to which that scope does or should cover the more ineffable subject matter of “brand values.” This comment from the perspective of United States trademark law will follow a similar plan. It first will address what is (and is not) a trademark, focusing on the extensions of trademarks beyond traditional word marks and design marks (logos; trade dress [get-up]) …


Intellectual Property Rights In An Attorney’S Work Product, Ralph D. Clifford Jan 2008

Intellectual Property Rights In An Attorney’S Work Product, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the main intellectual property consequences of practicing law and whether attorneys can prevent others from using their work-product. The article does not assume that the reader is an expert in intellectual property law; instead, it is designed to answer the types of questions practitioners have about their rights.


Kernochan Center News - Fall 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts Jan 2008

Kernochan Center News - Fall 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.


Kernochan Center News - Spring 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts Jan 2008

Kernochan Center News - Spring 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.


Choosing Metaphors, Jessica Litman Jan 2008

Choosing Metaphors, Jessica Litman

Book Chapters

The copyright law on the books is a large aggregation of specific statutory provisions; it goes on and on for pages and pages. When most people talk about copyright, though, they don't mean the long complicated statute codified in title I7 of the U.S. Code. Most people's idea of copyright law takes the form of a collection of principles and norms. They understand that those principles are expressed, if sometimes imperfectly, in the statutory language and the case law interpreting it, but they tend to believe that the underlying principles are what count. It is, thus, unsurprising that the rhetoric …


Sparing Internet Radio From The Real Threat Of The Hypothetical Marketplace, Mark D. Robertson Jan 2008

Sparing Internet Radio From The Real Threat Of The Hypothetical Marketplace, Mark D. Robertson

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In early 2007, the newly minted Copyright Royalty Board(CRB) handed down its first ruling, which set royalty rates for the digital performance of sound recordings. The CRB's ruling ignited a firestorm of concern among Internet radio broadcasters (webcasters) and their listeners. For some webcasters, the change to royalty rates constituted a 300-1200% increase over what was due under the previous scheme. This massive increase in royalties is attributable to the willing buyer/willing seller standard that the CRB is statutorily required to employ. This standard directs the CRB to construct one hypothetical marketplace and establish rates to which most buyers and …


Tolerated Use, Tim Wu Jan 2008

Tolerated Use, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

"Tolerated use" is a term that refers to the contemporary spread of technically infringing, but nonetheless tolerated, use of copyrighted works. Such patterns of mass infringement have occurred before in copyright history, though perhaps not on the same scale, and have usually been settled with the use of special laws, called compulsory licensing regimes, more familiar to non-copyright scholars as liability rules. This paper suggests that, in present times, a different and slightly unusual solution to the issue of widespread illegal use is emerging-an "opt-in" system for copyright holders, that is in property terms a rare species of ex post …


Authors And Readers: Conceptualizing Authorship In Copyright Law, Alina Ng Dec 2007

Authors And Readers: Conceptualizing Authorship In Copyright Law, Alina Ng

Alina Ng

Copyright law recognizes authors as the first owners of copyright. However, there is paucity in literature in copyright analysis of the author and the rights which should be granted by virtue of the very act of creativity in the production of literary and artistic works. This indicates insufficient attention paid to a concept that is so central to a law that primarily aims to encourage authorship for society’s benefit. The idea of the author and authorship as a creative process is central to copyright analysis. Deeper analysis of the author and creative authorship will provide insights into how the law …


Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow Dec 2007

Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The lack of regulation of the production of pornography in the United States leaves pornography performers exposed to substantial risks. Producers of pornography typically respond to attempts to regulate pornography as infringements upon free speech. At the same time, large corporations involved in the production and sale of pornography rely on copyright law's complex regulatory framework to protect their pornographic content from copying and unauthorized distribution. Web 2.0 also facilitates the production and distribution of pornography by individuals. These user-generators produce their own pornography, often looking to monetize their productions themselves via advertising revenues and subscription models. Much like their …