Law Commons^™

Will Artificial Intelligence Eat The Law? The Rise Of Hybrid Social-Ordering Systems, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Software has partially or fully displaced many former human activities, such as catching speeders or flying airplanes, and proven itself able to surpass humans in certain contests, like Chess and Jeopardy. What are the prospects for the displacement of human courts as the centerpiece of legal decision-making? Based on the case study of hate speech control on major tech platforms, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, this Essay suggests displacement of human courts remains a distant prospect, but suggests that hybrid machine – human systems are the predictable future of legal adjudication, and that there lies some hope in that combination, …

Minds, Machines, And The Law: The Case Of Volition In Copyright Law, Mala Chatterjee, Jeanne C. Fromer

Faculty Scholarship

The increasing prevalence of ever-sophisticated technology permits machines to stand in for or augment humans in a growing number of contexts. The questions of whether, when, and how the so-called actions of machines can and should result in legal liability thus will also become more practically pressing. One important set of questions that the law will inevitably need to confront is whether machines can have mental states, or — at least — something sufficiently like mental states for the purposes of the law. This is because a number of areas of law have explicit or implicit mental state requirements for …

Causing Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright protection attaches to an original work of expression the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible medium. Yet modern copyright law contains no viable mechanism by which to examine whether someone is causally responsible for the creation and fixation of the work. Whenever the issue of causation arises, copyright law relies on its preexisting doctrinal devices to resolve the issue, in the process cloaking its intuitions about causation in altogether extraneous considerations. This Article argues that copyright law embodies an unstated yet distinct theory of authorial causation, which connects the element of human agency to a work …

Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Should copyright infringement claims be treated as marketable assets? Copyright law has long emphasized the free and independent alienability of its exclusive rights. Yet, the right to sue for infringement – which copyright law grants authors in order to render its exclusive rights operational – has never been thought of as independently assignable, or indeed as the target of investments by third parties. As a result, discussions of copyright law and policy rarely consider the possibility of an acquisition or investment market emerging for actionable copyright claims and the advantages that such a market might hold for copyright’s goals, objectives, …

Technological Innovation, International Competition, And The Challenges Of International Income Taxation, Michael J. Graetz, Rachael Doud

Faculty Scholarship

Because of the importance of technological innovation to economic growth, nations strive to stimulate and attract the research and development ("R&D") that leads to that innovation and to make themselves hospitable environments for the holding of intellectual property ("IP"). Tax policies have taken center stage in their efforts to accomplish these goals and to capture a share of the income from technological innovations.

Designing cost-effective methods of supporting technological innovations has, however, become substantially more difficult as the world economy has become more interconnected. Where R&D is performed and where income is earned change in response to the nature and …

Hot News: The Enduring Myth Of Property In News, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

The “hot news” doctrine refers to a cause of action for the misappropriation of time-sensitive factual information that state laws afford purveyors of news against free riding by a direct competitor. Entirely the offshoot of the Supreme Court’s decision in International News Service v. Associated Press, the doctrine enables an information gatherer to prevent a competitor from free riding on its efforts at collecting and distributing timely information. Over the last few years, newsgatherers of different kinds have begun using the doctrine with increased frequency, believing it to create and protect an ownership interest in news. This Article argues …

Copyright And Control Over New Technologies Of Dissemination, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship of copyright to new technologies that exploit copyrighted works is often perceived to pit copyright against progress. Historically, when copyright owners seek to eliminate a new kind of dissemination, and when courts do not deem that dissemination harmful to copyright owners, courts decline to find infringement. However, when owners seek instead to participate in and be paid for the new modes of exploitation, the courts, and Congress, appear more favorable to copyright control over that new market. Today, the courts and Congress regard the unlicensed distribution of works over the Internet as impairing copyright owners' ability to avail …

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 …

Four Reasons And A Paradox: The Manifest Superiority Of Copyright Over Sui Generis Protection Of Computer Software, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The "Manifesto Concerning the Legal Protection of Computer Programs" offers an extensive and challenging critique of current intellectual property protection of software. The authors argue strongly that the law should focus on the value of the know-how embodied in programs and the importance of protecting it, rather than on the particular means which might be used to appropriate it. The authors seek to compel reconceptualization of the place of computer programs, and of software authors' creativity, within the domain of intellectual property. However, their brief for change manifests several flaws. Paradoxically, it comes at once both too soon and too …

No "Sweat"? Copyright And Other Protection Of Works Of Information After Feist V. Rural Telephone, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision last Term in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. proscribed copyright protection for works of information that fail to manifest a modicum of creative originality in selection or arrangement. Discarding a long – if lately uneasy – tradition of U.S. copyright coverage of informational works that display far greater industriousness than imagination, the Court ruled that copyright does not secure the "sweat of the brow" or the investment of resources in the compilation of a work of information. The Court thus stripped away or sharply reduced the copyright protection afforded a variety …

Creation And Commercial Value: Copyright Protection Of Works Of Information, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In 1899, Augustine Birrell, a Victorian barrister, lamented: "The question of copyright has, in these latter days, with so many other things, descended into the market-place, and joined the wrangle of contending interests and rival greedinesses." Birrell's remark conveys distaste for those authors who would "realise the commercial value of their wares." But the question of copyright has always been joined with that of commercial value. Indeed, by affording authors limited monopoly protection for their writings, our Constitution relies on wrangling greed to promote the advancement of both creativity and profit. Nonetheless, the distinction Birrell implies between copyrightworthy works of …