Law Commons^™

Commil Usa, Llc V. Cisco Systems: Joining Policy And Prose To Foster A Good Faith Analysis, Theresa E. Durante

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

A Functional Approach To Copyright Policy, Robert E. Suggs

Faculty Scholarship

This essay results from a half-century spent observing the development and stagnation of a once vital music form, jazz. Curiosity spurred its evolution when a successor to John Coltrane failed to emerge within a few years of his early death. Over the ensuing decades, I became concerned that advancing technology and the 1976 Copyright Act had fundamentally undermined our cultural ecology.

Unnoticed over the past century, technology has changed our experience of expressive culture, (the stories, images, and melodies that copyright most strongly protects), from live performance in social settings to solitary consumption of recorded media. Neurologically and physiologically this …

A Race To Digitization?: Kirtsaeng V. John Wiley & Sons Impact On The Digital Publication Market, Amelia Parsons

Proxy

No abstract provided.

Ip Law Book Review: Configuring The Networked Self: Law, Code, And The Play Of Every Day Practice, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Julie Cohen's Configuring the Networked Self is an extraordinarily insightful book. Cohen not only applies extant theory to law; she also distills it into her own distinctive social theory of the information age. Thus, even relatively short sections of chapters of her book often merit article-length close readings. I here offer a brief for the practical importance of Cohen’s theory, and ways it should influence intellectual property policy and scholarship.

Indistinguishable From Magic: A Wizard's Guide To Copyright And 3d Printing, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

3D printing is a technology of such surprise and wonder that it verges on the magical. But what if 3D printers actually were magic? How would copyright law treat the wizards who used them? This Comment uses the magical analogy to make familiar doctrines strange, and a strange technology familiar.

This Comment was prepared as an invited comment on Kyle Dolinsky's "CAD’s Cradle: Untangling Copyrightability, Derivative Works, and Fair Use in 3D Printing" for the 2013 Washington and Lee Student Notes Colloquium.

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, James Ming Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Thomas Folsom, Timothy S. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank A. Pasquale, Elizabeth A. Reilly, Jeffery Samuels, Katherine J. Strandburg, Kara W. Swanson, Andrew W. Torrance, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Faculty Scholarship

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions. Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …

Coping With The America Invents Act: Patent Challenges For Startup Companies, Patricia E. Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Copyright Law For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs

Faculty Scholarship

Arguments about the proper scope of copyright protection focus on the economic consequences of varying degrees of protection. Most analysts view copyright as an economic phenomenon, and the size and health of our copyright industries measure the success of copyright policies. The constitutional text granting Congress the copyright power and the nature of special interest lobbying naturally create this economic focus; but this is a serious mistake. An exclusively economic focus makes no more sense than measuring the nutritional merits of our food supply from the size and profitability of the fast food industry.

The expressive culture that copyright protects …

Personal Jurisdiction And Joinder In Mass Copyright Troll Litigation, Jason R. Lafond

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Martek Biosciences Corp. V. Nutrinova, Inc.: Flipping The Lexiographer Rule On Its Head, Ngai Zhang

Proxy

No abstract provided.

Medical Alert: Alarming Challenges Facing Medical Technology Innovation, Lawrence M. Sung

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Resolving Conflicts Between Green Technology Transfer And Intellectual Property Law, Robert V. Percival, Alan Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines claims that intellectual property law, which is designed to create incentives for innovation, actually may inhibit the transfer to developing countries of green energy innovations. Although the paper cannot find significant examples of green energy technologies whose diffusion has been hindered by existing intellectual property protections, it explores strategies, such as compulsory licensing schemes, for responding to such problems if and when they arise in the future. The paper concludes that intellectual property law need not be an obstacle to a global transformation toward a green energy infrastructure that can promote economic development while advancing new levels …

Joining Or Changing The Conversation? Catholic Social Thought And Intellectual Property, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Elephantine Google Books Settlement, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

The genius—some would say the evil genius—of the proposed Google Books settlement is the way it fuses legal categories. The settlement raises important class action, copyright, and antitrust issues, among others. But just as an elephant is not merely a trunk plus legs plus a tail, the settlement is more than the sum of the individual issues it raises. These “issues” are, really just different ways of describing a single, overriding issue of law and policy—a new way to concentrate an intellectual property industry.

In this essay, I will argue for the critical importance of seeing the settlement all at …

Three Theories Of Copyright In Ratings, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

Are ratings copyrightable? The answer depends on what ratings are. As a history of copyright in ratings shows, some courts treat them as unoriginal facts, some treat them as creative opinions, and some treat them as troubling self-fulfilling prophecies. The push and pull among these three theories explains why ratings are such a difficult boundary case for copyright, both doctrinally and theoretically. The fact-opinion tension creates a perverse incentive for raters: the less useful a rating, the more copyrightable it looks. Self-fulfilling ratings are the most troubling of all: copyright’s usual balance between incentives and access becomes indeterminate when ratings …

Vogue Juridique & The Theory Choice Problem In The Debate Over Copyright Protection For Fashion Designs, Michael G. Bennett, Nick Buell, Jason Cetel, C. C. Perry

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Ipq; Summer 2010

IPQ; the Maryland IP Law Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Ipq; Spring 2010

IPQ; the Maryland IP Law Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Strategies For Promoting Green Energy Innovation, Deployment, & Technology Transfer, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

This paper surveys various strategies for promoting the development and deployment of green energy technologies.

D Is For Digitize: An Introduction, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

This brief introductory essay reviews the history of D is for Digitize conference on the Google Books settlement and provides an overview of the seven articles in the symposium issue.

Copyright For A Social Species, Robert E. Suggs

Faculty Scholarship

Arguments about the proper scope of copyright protection focus on the economic consequences of varying degrees of protection. Most analysts view copyright as an economic phenomenon, and the size and health of our copyright industries measure the success of copyright policies. The constitutional text granting Congress the copyright power and the nature of special interest lobbying naturally create this economic focus; but this is a serious mistake. An exclusively economic focus makes no more sense than measuring the nutritional merits of our food supply from the size and profitability of the fast food industry.

The expressive culture that copyright protects …

The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, And The Future Of Books, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

For the past four years, Google has been systematically making digital copies of books in the collections of many major university libraries. It made the digital copies searchable through its web site--you couldn't read the books, but you could at least find out where the phrase you're looking for appears within them. This outraged copyright owners, who filed a class action lawsuit to make Google stop. Then, last fall, the parties to this large class action announced an even larger settlement: one that would give Google a license not only to scan books, but also to sell them.

The settlement …

How To Fix The Google Book Search Settlement, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

The proposed settlement in the Google Book Search case should be approved with strings attached. The project will be immensely good for society, and the proposed deal is a fair one for Google, for authors, and for publishers. The public interest demands, however, that the settlement be modified first. It creates two new entities—the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth—with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways. We the public have a right to demand that those entities be subject to healthy, pro-competitive oversight, …

The New Private Ordering Of Intellectual Property, Lawrence M. Sung

Faculty Scholarship

One consequence of the renewed U.S. Supreme Court interest in patent cases in recent years is an enhanced scrutiny on patent rights generally and, in particular, on the importance of better defining contracts to govern the patent rights among the parties. The Intellectual Property Law Program of the University of Maryland School of Law, in collaboratoin with the Business Law Program and the Journal of Business & Technology Law, convened a symposium on April 18, 2008 to consider the pertinent jurisprudence to inform prudent business practices in managing patent rights by private agreements. This Issue of the Journal includes a …

In The Wake Of Reinvigorated U.S. Supreme Court Activity In Patent Appeals, Lawrence M. Sung

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Privilege-Wise And Patent (And Trade-Secret)-Foolish?: How The Courts' Misapplication Of The Military And State Secrets Privilege Violates The Constitution And Endangers National Security, Davida H. Isaacs, Robert M. Farley

Faculty Scholarship

It is every inventor's nightmare: a valuable idea, stolen, with no legal recourse. Yet that is precisely what happened in Lucent v. Crater, where the Federal Circuit permitted the Federal Government to defeat the inventors' claims using the military and state secrets privilege. In light of the recent upsurge in the Government's invocation of this privilege, it is time to scrutinize more carefully courts' highly deferential response to its use. There is little question that the executive branch must be able to invoke the privilege in order to ensure that national security is not imperiled by public disclosure of information. …

The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay explores the imagined ethics of copyright: the ethical stories that people tell to justify, make sense of, and challenge copyright law. Such ethical visions are everywhere in intellectual property discourse, and legal scholarship ought to pay more attention to them. The essay focuses on a deontic vision of reciprocity in the author-audience relationship, a set of linked claims that authors and audiences ought to respect each other and express this respect through voluntary transactions.

Versions of this default ethical vision animate groups as seemingly antagonistic as the music industry, file sharers, free software advocates, and Creative Commons. …

Strangers In A Strange Land: Specialized Courts Resolving Patent Disputes, Lawrence M. Sung

Faculty Scholarship

As the number of cases and disputes involving proprietary technology subject to intellectual property rights has increased in recent years, a decades-old view that such matters should be adjudicated exclusively by specialized courts and judges has experienced a renaissance. This call for specialized, or problem-solving, courts at both the federal and state levels is not unique to the intellectual property field, however. Indeed, there has been a significant movement over the past several years to establish specialized drug courts, community courts, mental health courts, and domestic violence courts. One common element among these efforts is the idea that specialized courts …

Not All Property Is Created Equal: Why Modern Courts Resist Applying The Takings Clause To Patents, And Why They Are Right To Do So, Davida H. Isaacs

Faculty Scholarship

After a century of disregard, the question of whether patents are entitled to protection under the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause has recently become a topic of scholarly and judicial debate. While one might have expected this issue to have been settled long before, it is only the recent burgeoning of patentholders' regulatory takings claims that has made this question one of pressing interest. Thus far scholarship on the issue has focused on whether or not patents have historically been characterized as property. Meanwhile, last year's rejection by the Federal Circuit of a patentholder's right to assert a Takings Clause claim …

Copyright In An Era Of Information Overload: Toward The Privileging Of Categorizers, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental laws are designed to reduce negative externalities (such as pollution) that harm the natural environment. Copyright law should adjust the rights of content creators in order to compensate for the ways they reduce the usefulness of the information environment as a whole. Every new work created contributes to the store of expression, but also makes it more difficult to find whatever work one wants. Such search costs have been well-documented in information economics. Copyright law should take information overload externalities like search costs into account in its treatment of alleged copyright infringers whose work merely attempts to index, organize, …