Law Commons^™

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’S Copyright Jurisprudence, Ann Bartow, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt} "When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, the world lost a trailblazer for gender equality, a pop culture icon, a feisty liberal luminary who fought on behalf of the disenfranchised in the areas of civil rights and social justice, and an inspiration to millions of people. She will long be remembered for the social changes she helped effectuate as an advocate, scholar, and jurist.

Her amazing civil rights legacy overshadows other areas where Justice Ginsburg’s contributions have been substantial. This Article discusses one of the most interesting: copyright law. During her time as a jurist on …

Encouraging Entrepreneurship And Innovation Through Regulatory Democratization, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Entrepreneurship provides a path to prosperity for many people. In particular, women and minorities prefer entrepreneurship as their path to achieve the American Dream. In their striving, their startups and small businesses benefit our entire society. Entrepreneurial innovation has a positive impact on social welfare. For these reasons, the federal government has implemented numerous policies designed to support small businesses and promote startup innovation."

Investment In Latin America Will Limit Migration North, Ryan J. O'Riordan, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

The refugee crisis at the US Southern Border is due to multiple compounding factors: Latin America’s over-reliance on commodities, failure to economically diversify to innovation, and a lack of coherent US strategic engagement with the region. The situation is hemispheric; imploding states and a serious humanitarian calamity loom ever larger on the southern horizon. Since this represents a long-term problem requiring strategic and sustainable development initiatives, a new Alliance for Progress for the 21st Century is proposed which will build partnerships to advance innovation-driven development across the region.

Data Scams, Roger Allan Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Targeting platforms like Google and Facebook are usually seen as presenting tradeoffs between utility and privacy. This Article identifies and describes a different, non-privacy cost of targeting platforms: they make it easier for malicious actors to scam others. They do this by making it easier for scammers to reach the most promising victims, hide from law-enforcement authorities and others, and develop better scams. Technology offers potential solutions, since the same data and targeting tools that enable scams could help detect and prevent them, though neither platforms nor law-enforcement officials have both the incentives and expertise needed to develop and deploy …

Barbie In Bondage: What Orly Lobel's Book "You Don't Own Me: How Mattel V. Mga Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side" Tells Us About The Commoditization Of The Female Body, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] "This review essay reflects upon two of the central claims of [Orly Lobel's book] You Don't Own Me: first, that when companies put their energy and resources into intellectual property litigation rather than innovation, it is a strategy that is likely to fail; and second, that Barbie is a 'lead icon' in the disconnect between women pushing for general equality and those who prefer traditional gender roles for women."

Panel 2: Art Law And Blockchain, Tonya M. Evans, Derek Fincham, Katya Fisher, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Law Faculty Scholarship

Panel presentation on Art Law and Blockchain at 2019 AELJ Spring Symposium: Digital Art & Blockchain.

Establishing Appropriate Best Practices In Intellectual Property Management And Technology Transfer In The United Arab Emirates: Building Human Capital, Global Networks And Institutional Infrastructure To Drive Sustainable Knowledge-Based, Innovation-Driven Development, Stanley Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

Best practices (BP) are integral to national and international IP law, practice, and management. For the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to build, foster, and sustain globally-networked knowledge-based, innovation-driven, economic development in the 21st century, a suite of internationally-standardized BP in intellectual property (IP) management, technology transfer and information analysis will be necessary. For the UAE, and the other GCC states, appropriate and applicable BP will be critical to diversify from commodity over-dependence (petroleum) towards nationally, regionally and globally interconnected innovation ecosystems. Therefore, strategically building human capital, institutions, institutional infrastructure and global networks which will be required for UAE to leapfrog …

3d Printing And U.S. Copyright Law, Ryan G. Vacca, Peter S. Menell

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article explores how 3D printing fits within US copyright law. US copyright law provides a well-developed general framework for the protection of creative designs, whether fixed in CAD files or 3D objects. Enforcement of copyright protection in this industry faces some of the same challenges encountered by other content industries whose works were disrupted by the digital revolution. Nonetheless, 3D printing brings distinctive issues. Although grounded in statute, US copyright law has a rich common law tradition that affords courts significant leeway in adapting doctrines to new and unforeseen technological developments. This capacity is reinforced by the range of …

The Federal Circuit As An Institution, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is a unique institution. Unlike other circuit courts, the Federal Circuit’s jurisdiction is bound by subject area rather than geography, and it was created to address a unique set of problems specific to patent law. These characteristics have affected its institutional development and made the court one of the most frequently studied appellate courts. This chapter examines this development and describes the evolving qualities that have helped the Federal Circuit distinguish itself, for better or worse, as an institution.

This chapter begins with an overview of the concerns existing before creation of …

The Uneasy Case For Patent Federalism, Roger Allan Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Nationwide uniformity is often considered an essential feature of the patent system, necessary to fulfill that system’s disclosure and incentive purposes. In the last few years, however, more than half the states have enacted laws that seek to disrupt this uniformity by making it harder for patent holders to enforce their patents. There is an easy case to be made against giving states greater authority over the patent system: doing so would threaten to disrupt the system’s balance between innovation incentives and a robust public domain and would permit rent seeking by states that disproportionately produce or consume innovation.

There …

Tagmarks, Alexandra J. Roberts

Law Faculty Scholarship

From Kentucky Fried Chicken’s #HowDoYouKFC campaign to viral fundraiser #IceBucketChallenge to Instagram phenomenon #TBT, hashtags as trademarks — I call them “tagmarks” — are having a moment. Given the resources that brands invest in marketing via social media, and specifically in choosing and using hashtags, it’s not surprising that some players have begun to seek federal trademark registration for those hashtags. By the end of 2015, companies had successfully registered two hundred tagmarks and sought protection for over a thousand others; the US Trademark Office granted more tagmark registrations in that year than it did in every previous year combined. …

Antimicrobial Resistance (Amr) And Multidrug Resistance (Mdr): Overview Of Current Approaches, Consortia And Intellectual Property Issues, Andrew Jenner, Niresh Bhagwandin, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

The supply of new diagnostics and treatments is insufficient to keep up with the increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and multidrug resistance (MDR) as older medicines are used more widely and microbes develop resistance to them. At the same time, significant quantities of antibiotics are used on patients and animals that do not need them, while others who do need them lack access.

Effective responses to AMR/MDR require effort by both the public and private sectors to develop and disseminate new diagnostics, vaccines and treatments on a global scale, as well as to adapt them to local needs. This calls …

Patent Law, Copyright Law, And The Girl Germs Effect, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Inventors pursue patents and authors receive copyrights.

No special education is required for either endeavor, and nothing

precludes a person from being both an author and an inventor.

Inventors working on patentable industrial projects geared

toward commercial exploitation tend to be scientists or engineers.

Authors, with the exception of those writing computer code, tend

to be educated or trained in the creative arts, such as visual art,

performance art, music, dance, acting, creative writing, film

making, and architectural drawing. There is a well-warranted

societal supposition that most of the inventors of patentable

inventions are male. Assumptions about the genders …

Contextual Healing: What To Do About Scandalous Trademarks And Lanham Act 2(A), Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Offensive trademarks have come to the forefront of trademark policy and practice in recent years. While it was once true that more attention had been paid to Lanham Act section 2(a) in the pages of law reviews than in the courts, recent prominent cases have focused attention on the ban on registration of offensive marks and the widespread impact of this ban on trademark owners.

In this Article, I answer the fundamental question: Given the problems that my previous research has identified, what should be done about the 2(a) bar on registration of scandalous trademarks? This Article argues, as a …

Authenticity Key To Success In Life And In Legal Information, Susan Drisko Zago

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Authenticity is defined as something that is not false or an imitation. Savvy consumers pay a premium for an authentic product and treat with suspicion a product that does not ring true.

We have a system of trademark and copyright protections that protect a company’s intellectual property rights and brands and consumer protections to protect the consumer from counterfeit and unsafe products. Now, there is model legislation that will provide a systematic way to protect, preserve and provide better electronic access to the bread and butter of our legal profession: our official state legal documents."

The Patent Spiral, Roger Allan Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Examination — the process of reviewing a patent application and deciding whether to grant the requested patent — improves patent quality in two ways. It acts as a substantive screen, filtering out meritless applications and improving meritorious ones. It also acts as a costly screen, discouraging applicants from seeking low-value patents. Yet despite these dual roles, the patent system has a substantial quality problem: it is both too easy to get a patent (because examiners grant invalid patents that should be filtered out by a substantive screen) and too cheap to do so (because examiners grant low-value nuisance patents that …

Unh School Of Law Ip Library: 20th Anniversary Reflection On The Only Academic Ip Library In The United States, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] The UNH School of Law Intellectual Property Library celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. It is a fortuitous time for this look back and for strategic considerations for the future. This anniversary comes at a time in the history of legal education when conditions over the past few years have intensified the analysis of mission and resources for law school libraries. This article is a retrospective review of the history and dynamics surrounding the founding and first twenty years of growth. It is also an analysis of the future growth and mission of the IP Library during times that …

If It’S Broke, Fix It: Fixing Fixation, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

The fixation requirement, once an intended instrument for added flexibility in copyrightability, has become an unworkable standard under modern copyright law. The last twenty-five years have witnessed a dramatic expansion in creative media. Developments in both digital media and contemporary art have challenged what it means to be fixed, and cases dealing with these works reveal how inapposite current interpretations of fixation are for these forms of expression. Yet, getting fixation “right” is important, for it is often the juridical threshold over which idea becomes expression. Thus, we must enable fixation to help define the parameters of creative expression while …

A Little Birdie Said, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Shareholders are organizing and mobilizing on new social media platforms like Twitter. This changes the dynamics of shareholder proxy contests in ways that favor shareholders over management. Disruptive technology may bring about a shareholder revolution, which may not be in shareholders’ best interests, at least from the perspective of shareholder wealth maximization, and it also has powerful implications for the future of corporate social responsibility.

Ip Basics: Advice On Ip Careers For Those Without Technical Backgrounds, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] If you can spend three more years in school, intellectual property offers a wide range of interesting and rewarding careers. Those without technical backgrounds, however, should not pursue an intellectual property career blindly. Unless your undergraduate degree is in a physical science or engineering -- or you have at least a masters (and probably some experience) in biotechnology, patent opportunities will be slim. As discussed in more detail below, people without technical training are more apt to deal with copyrights, trademarks and special contracts such as licenses or franchise agreements. Yet intellectual property law covering non-technical subjects is often …

Ip Basics: Avoiding Patent, Trademark And Copyright Problems, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Patents, copyrights and trademarks, as well as trade secrets and related rights, can be used to exclude free riders. These rights are collectively called "intellectual property" or IP.

Ip Basics: Managing Intellectual Property, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This provides an overview of the IP management process, including the key decisions to be made in the effort to make the most of intellectual property.

Ip Basics: Copyright On The Internet, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This discussion focuses on copyright issues most apt to concern those who post to or own email lists or those who have put up web pages. Such matters as the fundamental distinction between works that are and are not "for hire," registration, and issues to consider in transferring copyright interests are treated in other copyright discussions above.

Ip Basics: Advice On Ip Careers For Those With Technical Backgrounds, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Full-time law school takes three years and culminates in the Juris Doctor. A J.D. from a school accredited by the American Bar Association qualifies a person to take the bar exam in any state. As mentioned above, college graduates need not pursue any particular line of study to be accepted into law school. At the University of New Hampshire School of Law, for example, over a third of our students have degrees in engineering or science, and many have had extensive experience or advanced degrees, including M.D.s and Ph.Ds. -- the last being particularly helpful for biotechnology patent careers.

Ip Basics: Patenting Your Idea, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This discussion addresses the relationship between patents and the market value of inventions, as well as the need to be skeptical of invention promoters and other matters of importance to first-time inventors. It also discusses the need for counsel in making outside submissions and the importance of getting prior art searches.

Ip Basics: Copyright In Written Work, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Written primarily for free-lance writers, this discussion addresses ownership and duration of copyrights, deposit and registration, notice, and remedies that are closely tied to prompt registration. It also discusses licensing and other matters of interest, as well as the need for counsel.

Ip Basics: Trademarks And Business Goodwill, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This is information all business owners need if they wish to preserve their hard-won goodwill. It discusses, for example, the important differences between strong and weak marks for products and services, the value of state and federal registrations and the importance of searches (to avoid wasting money).

Ip Basics: Seeking Cost-Effective Patents, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This discussion briefly explores the range of intellectual property options in view of the nature of inventions and their market value, particularly for entrepreneurs. Specific strategies for controlling ever-increasing patent costs in the face of market uncertainty. It does not recommend that inventors prosecute patent applications themselves, lest they get much less than they pay for.

Ip Basics: Copyright In Visual Arts, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This discussion focuses on the needs of free-lance artists, craftspeople, photographers, sculptors and the like.

Ip Basics: Copyright For Digital Authors, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Written for computer artists and programmers, this paper addresses the basics, as well as the registration of multiple works, difference between works that are and are not prepared "for hire," and other matters of interest to entrepreneurs as well as to free-lance programmers and artists.