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Full-Text Articles in Law

Copyrighting Experiences: How Copyright Law Applies To Virtual Reality Programs, Alexis Dunne Oct 2019

Copyrighting Experiences: How Copyright Law Applies To Virtual Reality Programs, Alexis Dunne

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This note will attempt to shed light on the question of what kind of protection copyright law affords VR experiences. Part II discusses the nature of VR experiences and their implementation through specifically tailored VR technology. Part III provides an overview of copyright protection, its limitations, and specifically the history of the copyrightability of computer programs. Parts IV and V outline case law relevant to the discussion of the copyrightability of different types of VR experiences and how that case law similarly or dissimilarly apply to the protection of VR experiences. Part IV focuses on protecting VR experiences as a …


The Football As Intellectual Property Object, Michael J. Madison Jan 2019

The Football As Intellectual Property Object, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The histories of technology and culture are filled with innovations that emerged and took root by being shared widely, only to be succeeded by eras of growth framed by intellectual property. The Internet is a modern example. The football, also known as the pelota, ballon, bola, balón, and soccer ball, is another, older, and broader one. The football lies at the core of football. Intersections between the football and intellectual property law are relatively few in number, but the football supplies a focal object through which the great themes of intellectual property have shaped the game: origins; innovation and …


Care For A Sample? De Minimis, Fair Use, Blockchain, And An Approach To An Affordable Music Sampling System For Independent Artists, Sean M. Corrado Jan 2019

Care For A Sample? De Minimis, Fair Use, Blockchain, And An Approach To An Affordable Music Sampling System For Independent Artists, Sean M. Corrado

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Thanks, in part, to social media and the digital streaming age of music, independent artists have seen a rise in popularity and many musicians have achieved mainstream success without the affiliation of a major record label. Alongside the growth of independent music has come the widespread use of music sampling. Sampling, which was once depicted as a crime perpetrated by hip-hop artists, is now prevalent across charttopping hits from all genres. Artists have used sampling as a tool to integrate cultures, eras, and styles of music while experimenting with the bounds of musical creativity. Artists whose works are sampled have …


Intellectual Property Harms: A Paradigm For The Twenty-First Century, Jessica Silbey Jan 2019

Intellectual Property Harms: A Paradigm For The Twenty-First Century, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay is part of a larger book project that investigates how contemporary intellectual property debates, especially in the digital age, are taking place over less familiar terrain: fundamental rights and values. Its argument draws from the diverse, personal accounts of interviews from everyday creators and innovators and focuses on descriptions of harms and, as some say “abuses,” they suffer within their practicing communities. The harms are not described are the usual harms that intellectual property law is understood to prevent. Typically, intellectual property injuries are conceived in individual terms and as economic injuries. An infringer is a thief. …


Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo Jan 2019

Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the primary theoretical justifications for copyright is the role that creative works play in helping develop an individual’s sense of personhood and self-actualization. Typically ascribed to the writings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, personhood-based theories of copyright serve as the foundation for the moral rights prominent in European copyright law and mandated by the leading intellectual property treaty, which give authors inalienable control over aspects of their works after they have been created. The conventional wisdom about the relationship between personhood and copyright suffers from two fatal flaws that have gone largely unappreciated. First, in …


Existential Copyright And Professional Photography, Jessica Silbey, Eva Subotnik, Peter Dicola Jan 2019

Existential Copyright And Professional Photography, Jessica Silbey, Eva Subotnik, Peter Dicola

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual property law has intended benefits, but it also carries certain costs — deliberately so. Skeptics have asked: Why should intellectual property law exist at all? To get traction on that overly broad but still important inquiry, we decided to ask a new, preliminary question: What do creators in a particular industry actually use intellectual property for? In this first-of-its-kind study, we conducted thirty-two in-depth qualitative interviews of photographers about how copyright law functions within their creative and business practices. By learning the actual functions of copyright law on the ground, we can evaluate and contextualize existing theories of intellectual …