Law Commons^™

Global Use/Territorial Rights: Private International Law Questions Of The Global Information Infrastructure, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In the private international law of intellectual property, and particularly of literary and artistic property, the basic principle is territoriality. Each country provides for its own regime of protection of works of authorship. The Berne Convention for the Protection and Literary and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Convention oblige their members to respect the rule of national treatment, that is, of non discrimination between domestic and foreign works from member countries. This rule reinforces the principle of territoriality, for it confirms the role of local copyright laws, by requiring that local law apply equally to the protection of local …

Putting Cars On The "Information Superhighway": Authors, Exploiters, And Copyright In Cyberspace, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of the "Information Superhighway" has sparked much speculation about the roles of authorship, of readership, and of literary property in the vast system of interlinked computer networks that has come to be known as "cyberspace." Through computers linked to a digital network, users can access and add to vast quantities of material. At least in theory, every computer user can become his, or her own publisher, and every terminal can become a library, bookstore, or audio and video jukebox.

The prospect of pervasive audience access to and ability to copy and further disseminate works of authorship challenges the …

Distinguishing Between Consensual And Nonconsensual Advantages Of Liability Rules, Ian Ayres, Eric Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell's thoughtful reply to our recent article contains powerful insights about the relative efficiency of liability and property rules. While we are in agreement that liability rules can be more efficient than property rules when transaction costs are low, we disagree about the cause of this liability-rule advantage. Kaplow and Shaveli believe that liability rules hold only a nonconsensual advantage over property rules (i.e., liability rules tend to induce efficient nonconsensual takings). While granting this oftrecognized nonconsensual advantage, we contend that liability rules may also have a consensual advantage in low-transaction-cost settings (i.e., liability rules facilitate …

Domestic And International Copyright Issues Implicated In The Compilation Of A Multimedia Product, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Suppose an entrepreneur wishes to create an interactive multimedia product on the theme of the Exploration of Space. The multimedia work would assemble components created specially for the product, and others drawn from preexisting works. The latter might include: Leonardo da Vinci drawings of aeronautical machines, archival photographs of early airplanes, excerpts from 19th and 20th century science-fiction novels, text and photos of newspaper accounts of space flights, NASA space maps, television news clips, excerpts of motion pictures and television series, and musical compositions and recordings. Elements specially created for the product might comprise the computer program users would employ …

Exploiting The Artist's Commercial Identity: The Merchandizing Of Art Images, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

"Merchandizing properties" are not a recent arrival on the copyright and trademark scene. As early as the 1930s, the Walt Disney Company foresaw the substantial economic gains from licensing the images of its animated motion picture characters in a variety of consumer media, from publications, to soft toys, clothing and household items. Most recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization has prepared a substantial comparative law study of "Character Merchandising." The merchandizing of fine arts images, however, is a more recent development, and is one that has so far received less attention from academic commentators. This article offers some preliminary observations, …