Law Commons^™

Rethinking Rand: Sdo-Based Approaches To Patent Licensing Commitments, Jorge Contreras

Working Papers

So-called “reasonable and nondiscriminatory” (RAND) licensing commitments have been utilized by standards-development organizations (SDOs) for years in an attempt to alleviate the risk of patent hold-up in standard-setting. These commitments, however, have proven to be vague and offer few assurances to product vendors or patent holders. A recent surge of international litigation concerning RAND commitments has brought this issue to the attention of regulators, industry and the public, and many agree that a better approach is needed. In this paper, I identify seven “first principles” that underlie the licensing and enforcement of standards-essential patents (SEP)s. These can be summarized as …

Supplemental Partial Final Decree Of The Water Rights Of The Navajo Nation, 11th Judicial District, San Juan County, State Of New Mexico

Native American Water Rights Settlement Project

Supplemental Partial Final Decree of the Water Rights of the Navajo Nation: Parties: Navajo Nation, NM, New Mexico, USA, United States.

Contents:

1. Jurisdiction, p.2; 2. Supplemental Decree, p.2; 3. Reserved Rights, p.2, including a) Livestock Water Use, p.4, b) Irrigation Water Use, p.6; 4. Water Rights Acquired under State Law, p.18; 5. Depletion Limits, p.22; 6. Allottees, p.24; 7. Limitations, p.24; 8. Disclaimers, p.27; 9. Jurisdiction after Entry of Decree, p.26; 10. Metering of Water Uses, p.26; 11. Records of Water Use, p.28; 12. Administration, p.32. [Source: https://sjrbadjudication.nmcourts.gov/navajo-inter-se-ab-07-1.aspx]

A Patent Misperception, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

Antitrust and intellectual property laws promote innovation and competition. As long as the costs of promotion do not exceed the benefit to society, then the laws act in harmony. Discord arises when patent holders use public and private ordering to restrain competition, restrict downstream trade, prevent the development of competing products and limit output by competitors. Using the Patent Act and the misperception of antitrust immunity to create a parallel and under-regulated legal system allows a small number of patent holders to coordinate their behavior to maximize profits and minimize competition. The Patent Act provides no shield to prosecution for …

Navajo Nation San Juan Basin In New Mexico Water Rights Settlement Agreement Of 2010, Navajo Nation, New Mexico, United States

Native American Water Rights Settlement Project

Settlement Agreement: Navajo Nation San Juan Basin, NM Water Rights Settlement (Dec. 17, 2010) Parties: Navajo Nation, US, NM. This Settlement relates to the Navajo Nation’s water rights in the San Juan River Basin located in NM. It is a part of the Juan River adjudication. It reconciles the Apr. 19, 2005 agreement with the Settlement Act. Allottees may make individual water right claims based upon historic and existing uses found in the Joint Hydrographic Survey Report. This Settlement finalizes all claims the Nation could make to the San Juan River Basin and settles all causes of action against the …

Pitfalls In Patenting Publicly Funded Research - Comments On Draft South African Regulations, Matthew Herder, Cynthia M. Ho

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

South Africa recently enacted legislation similar to the US. Bayh-Dole Act, which permits publicly funded institutions to obtain patent rights in hopes that the patent incentive will foster commercialization, as well as generate revenues to the funded institutions and scientists. While enacting analogs to Bayh-Dole seems presently in vogue, there are definitely concerned about the original legislation that have been voiced. When South Africa recently published proposed guidelines implementing its version of Bayh-Dole, it broadly opened up the opportunity for public comments. The attached paper discusses some of concerns, including problems with delaying timely knowledge dissemination and the need to …

Conditions And Covenants In License Contracts: Tales From A Test Of The Artistic License, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The Federal Circuit upheld the Artistic License in Jacobsen v. Katzer, establishing at long last that open source licenses are enforceable. Although that outcome received most of the headlines, the case's greater significance lies elsewhere. Jacobsen v. Katzer teaches valuable lessons about conditions and covenants in license contracts, lessons that apply to licenses of all persuasions. Moreover, the case raises an important issue about the interplay between contract and intellectual property law: can licensors manipulate the distinction between covenants and conditions in such a way that upsets the delicate balance in copyright law? The article explores the lessons taught by …

Acquiring Innovation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

In recent years, the innovation market has witnessed a new business model involving companies that are mere patent holding shells and not operating entities. They have no customers or products to offer, but they do have an aggressive tactic of using patent portfolios to threaten other operating companies with potential infringement litigation. The strategy is executed with the end goal of extracting handsome settlements. Acquisitions of patents for offensive use have become a major concern to operating companies because such acquisitions pose the threats of patent injunction, interrupting the business and crippling further innovation.

While many operating companies today know …

Intellectual Property Rights In An Attorney’S Work Product, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the main intellectual property consequences of practicing law and whether attorneys can prevent others from using their work-product. The article does not assume that the reader is an expert in intellectual property law; instead, it is designed to answer the types of questions practitioners have about their rights.

What If Seeds Were Not Patentable?, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

In 2001, the United States Supreme Court held that seeds were patentable subject matter - a decision, I assert, of much discussion and little impact. Protection of agricultural intellectual property through private ordering, used both to expand the protection available through public ordering and to circumvent the restrictions public ordering places on owners of intellectual property, has provided the incentives necessary to promote investment and innovation in seeds. It has not been the patentability of seeds that has led to agricultural advances, but rather the profitability of licensing agricultural intellectual property. What if seeds were not patentable? So what if …

Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Water Resource Code (2007), Shoshone-Bannock Tribes

Native American Water Rights Settlement Project

Tribal Water Code: 2007 Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Water Resource Code (WATR-07-S1 (2007). This Code establishes the Tribal Water Resources Commission and the Tribal Water Resources Dept; provides water allocation guidelines; structures a license and permitting system; determines effects of non-use and attempted adverse possession; provides penalties and enforcement; and sets up hearings and appeals. [Source: http://www.shoshonebannocktribes.com/elements/documents/water/2007-Sec-Int-Water-Code.pdf]

Acquisition Licenses In Tennessee: An Annotated Model Tennessee Acquisition License Agreement, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

The coauthors have constructed a model license agreement for use in connection with acquisitions, annotated with footnotes on substantive law and legal drafting issues. This model is intended to serve as a research piece, teaching tool, and practitioner resource. This agreement is part of a series of acquisition agreements and related ancillary contracts and instruments published by Transactions: Tennessee Journal of Business Law beginning in 2003.

Creative Commons And The New Intermediaries, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This symposium contribution examines the disintermediating and reintermediating roles played by Creative Commons licenses on the Internet. Creative Commons licenses act as a disintermediating force because they enable end-to-end transactions in copyrighted works. The licenses have reintermediating force by enabling new services and new online communities to form around content licensed under a Creative Commons license. Intermediaries focused on the copyright dimension have begun to appear online as search engines, archives, libraries, publishers, community organizers, and educators. Moreover, the growth of machine-readable copyright licenses and the new intermediaries that they enable is part of a larger movement toward a Semantic …

Why Sell What You Can License?, Contracting Around Statutory Protection Of Intellectual Property, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

Historically, the transfer of goods has been through sale, a model regulated by public legislation. Increasingly, however, the transfer of goods is occurring through licensing, a model regulated by private legislation. Privately-legislated licenses - for such chattels as musical and written works and agricultural goods - are being used to circumvent publicly-legislated restrictions on intellectual property. Private legislation should not circumvent public legislation, and intellectual property owners should not be allowed to circumvent the statutory scheme for protection of intellectual property. Licenses that augment publicly-legislated protection of intellectual property support the traditional role of contracts and should be enforced. Licenses …

General Public License 3.0: Hacking The Free Software Movement's Constitution, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The General Public License (GPL) enshrines a softwarehacker's' freedom to use code in important ways. Hackers oftenrefer to the GPL as the free software movement's "constitution."Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), wrote the most recent version of the GPL, version 2.0, back in 1991. For a constitution, a fourteen-year-old document is young, but for a license, it is quite old. The revision process is finally underway, led by Stallman and Eben Moglen, FSF's general counsel.

The release of GPL version 3.0 will be momentous for many reasons, but one reason stands out: The GPL governs much of …

Entrepreneurial Open Source Software Hackers: Mysql And Its Dual Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Hackers often quibble about commercializing software, yet most willreadily sell their programming services. Richard Stallman, the father of free software, has always recognized that hackers have a right to make money. Aside from selling programming services, however, Stallman's disciples seem to frown upon commercializing software. Other hackers, labeling themselves "open source" developers, have warmed to the possibility that free software may be profitable.

This article describes one of the most promising business models for hackers, called "dual licensing." In this model, hackers offer the same code under two different licenses: a commercial license and an open source license. Licensees who …

Be Not Afraid Of Change: Time To Eliminate The Corporate Practice Of Medicine Doctrine, Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone; it has been some time since physicians have been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of health care. The delivery and financing of health care places physicians in an integrated system that is only frustrated by the corporate practice of medicine doctrine. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are not influenced by financial gain. This is handily evidenced by the federal and …

Reconstructing The Software License, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This article analyzes the legitimacy of the software license as a institution of governance for computer programs. The question of the open source license is used as a starting point. Having conducted a broader inquiry into the several possible bases for the legitimacy of software licensing in general, the article argues that none of the grounds on which software licensing in general rests are sound. With respect to open source software in particular, the article concludes that achieving a legitimate institutional form for the goals that open source proponents have set for themselves may require looking beyond licensing as such.

De-Bugging Open Source Software Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Home computer users and businesses often rely on software developed by unconventional programmers known as "hackers." Hackers claim that the code they develop is superior in quality to the code developed by commercial software firms because hackers freely share the code they develop. This code sharing enables a multitude of programmers from around the world to rapidly find and fix bugs. The legal mechanism that enables hackers to deploy this worldwide team of de-buggers is a license agreement or, to be more precise,an assortment of license agreements known as "open source" licenses.

Although open source software developers may regularly fix …

Legal Aspects Of International Transfer Of Technology, Anna Mikhailovna Otkina

LLM Theses and Essays

For any international law practitioner issues relating to technology and proprietary information can arise in a number of a different situation. For example, transactions involving foreign distribution and sales rights relating to domestic products are a common part of the day-to-day practice of anyone engaged in the multinational business arena. Many of those transactions involve a contractual agreement in the form of a license, which is intended to transfer to the licensee the technology and related information, and the legal rights therewith, necessary to complete successfully the objective of the transaction: the distribution and sale of the domestic product at …

Petition For Writ Of Certiorari, Northeast Ohio Coalition For The Homeless, Et Al., V. City Of Cleveland, 522 U.S. 931 (1997), Kevin F. O'Neill, David Goldberger, Raymond V. Vasvari, Joan M. Englund

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

No abstract provided.

The Case For Color-Blind Distress Sales, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A Brief Defense Of Mass Market Software License Agreements, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

In the rapidly changing world of personal computer software, the end user license agreement ("EULA") has endured. The EULA is a familiar component of most personal computer software transactions. Many commentators, however, have maligned the practice of standard form software licensing. A survey of the literature on the subject might lead one to conclude that there are only critics--and no proponents--of EULAs.

Despite the din of criticism, EULAs continue to be widely usedby almost every mass-market software publisher, even though the cost of doing so is significant. This Article explains the value of EULAs for both software publishers and users, …

What's Art Got To Do With It?, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

I would like to thank the Cardozo LR for their invitation to speak, and all those who have taken the time to discuss this issue w[ith] me in the recent past, including my commentator Marci Hamilton. I also thank the audience for its attendance and attention, and I look forward to the criticisms/reactions from all of you and from Prof Hamilton.

Clearing The Airwaves For Access, Michael Botein

Articles & Chapters

While the courts and the government grapple with the concepts and consequences of access, activist citizens press broadcasters to open the airwaves. In the resulting legal tangle, the effective means of securing access are essentially extralegal, while the legal means are essentially ineffective.