Law Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of University Patent Activity, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Since 1980, a series of legislative acts and judicial decisions have affected the ownership, scope, and duration of patents. These changes have coincided with historic increases in patent activity among academic institutions.

This article presents an empirical study of how changes to patent policy precipitated responses by academic institutions, using spline regression functions to model their patent activity. We find that academic institutions typically reduced patent activity immediately before changes to the patent system, and increased patent activity immediately afterward. This is especially true among research universities. In other words, academic institutions responded to patent incentives in a strategic manner, …

Equitable Resale Royalties, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A “resale royalty right” or droit de suite(resale right) is a legal right that gives certain artists the right to claim a percentage of the resale price of the artworks they created. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Tunis Model Law on Copyright for Developing Countries provide for an optional resale royalty right. Many countries have created a resale royalty right, although the particulars of the right differ from country to country. But the United States has repeatedly declined to create a federal resale royalty right, and a federal court recently held …

An Empirical Study Of The Copyright Practices Of American Law Journals, Brian L. Frye, Franklin L. Runge, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article presents an empirical study of the copyright practices of American law journals in relation to copyright ownership and fair use, based on a 24-question survey. It concludes that many American law journals have adopted copyright policies that are inconsistent with the expectations of legal scholars and the scope of copyright protection. Specifically, many law journals have adopted copyright policies that effectively preclude open-access publishing, and unnecessarily limit the fair use of copyrighted works. In addition, it appears that some law journals may not understand their own copyright policies. This article proposes the creation of a Code of Copyright …

Fixing Forum Selling, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

"Forum selling” is jurisdictional competition intended to attract litigants. While consensual forum selling may be beneficial, non-consensual forum selling is harmful because it encourages jurisdictions to adopt an inefficient pro-plaintiff bias. In the last 20 years, the Eastern District of Texas has adopted an aggressive and remarkably successful policy of non-consensual forum selling in patent infringement actions. In 2016, 44% of all patent infringement actions were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, and 93% of them were filed by patent assertion entities or “patent trolls.”

In December 2016, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TC Heartland v. Kraft, …

Incidental Intellectual Property, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As Mark Twain apocryphally observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The history of the right of publicity reflects a common intellectual property rhyme. Much like copyright, the right of publicity is an incidental intellectual property right that emerged out of regulation. Over time, the property right gradually detached itself from the regulation and evolved into an independent legal doctrine.

Copyright emerged from the efforts of the Stationers’ Company to preserve its members’ monopoly on the publication of works of authorship. Similarly, it can be argued the right of publicity emerged from the efforts of bubblegum companies to …

Against Creativity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

According to the Supreme Court, copyright requires both independent creation and creativity. The independent creation requirement provides that copyright cannot protect an element of a work of authorship that is copied from a previously existing work. But scholars disagree about the meaning of and justification for the creativity requirement.

The creativity requirement should be abandoned because it is irrelevant to the scope of copyrightable subject matter and distorts copyright doctrine by encouraging inefficient “creativity rhetoric.” The purpose of copyright is to encourage the production of economically valuable works of authorship, not creativity.