Law Commons^™

Trademark Law And Consumer Centrality - Part I, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

The conventional wisdom provides two traditional justifications for trademark law. The first is the “consumer protection” rationale. If there were no trademark law, an unknown soft drink manufacturer could freely use Coca-Cola’s COKE trademark on its goods. If it did so, consumers would be defrauded; they would buy the unknown’s products thinking that they were Coca-Cola’s. Trademark law prevents this sort of fraud from occurring and thereby protects consumers from fraud.

The second justification is the “producer incentive” rationale. In the preceding COKE example, it is not just the consumer who is happy that fraud has been prevented. Coca-Cola is …

Transformation, Copyright Infringement, And Fair Use, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

A small copyright decision out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit last month has gotten a big reaction from copyright experts. The case is Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation, and it involves an entertaining set of facts.

In the 1960s, there was a young University of Wisconsin student named Paul Soglin, who had an anti-authoritarian streak. He led a number of demonstrations on issues ranging from civil rights to the Vietnam War. Indeed, one particular Vietnam protest, in May 1969, led to his arrest for failure to obey a police officer. That same protest became an annual …

Copyright's Topography: An Empirical Study Of Copyright Litigation, Christopher A. Cotropia, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

One of the most important ways to measure the impact of copyright law is through empirical examination of actual copyright infringement cases. Yet scholars have universally overlooked this rich source of data. This study fills that gap through a comprehensive empirical analysis of copyright infringement litigation, examining the pleadings, motions, and dockets from more than nine hundred copyright lawsuits filed from 2005 through 2008. The data we collect allow us to examine a wide variety of copyright issues, such as the rate of settlements versus judgments; the incidence of litigation between major media companies, small firms, and individuals; the kinds …

Fair Use And The Faces Of Transformation, Part I, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

The recent Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation case has been the focus of three recent posts in this Intellectual Property Issues series – from me, Doug Lichtman, and Rod Smolla. In Kienitz, the defendant changed a photograph of the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, into a stylized, high-contrast image, printed on t-shirts that mocked the mayor’s policies. The U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the new image constituted a fair use and therefore did not infringe the photograph’s copyright. (The original photo and the stylized version on the t-shirt can be seen here.) …

Cease, Desist, And Laugh, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

Anyone who teaches intellectual property law knows how exciting the subject matter can be for students. They inundate professors not only with questions about the classroom material but also with news about emerging technologies, cutting-edge litigation, and legislative initiatives. And the attentive professor will seek to turn these exchanges into teaching moments.

One favorite of students involves a classic intellectual-property mechanism, the cease-and-desist letter. It’s a favorite, I think, because such correspondence can be over the top, and the responses can be quite funny – making this a perfect topic for this April Fool’s edition of IP Viewpoints. [...]

Small Fry In Copyright Litigation, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

In two of my earlier entries in this series, I discussed the results of an empirical study of copyright cases that I have been doing with my colleague Chris Cotropia. One of those entries focused on how hard the parties in copyright lawsuits fightagainst each other, and the other focused on the role of major media companies in copyright litigation.

In this entry, I will continue to talk about the parties that we observed in our study, but instead of discussing major media companies, I will concentrate on the other end of the spectrum: the individual as a party. This …