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Boston University School of Law

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Copyright's Derivative Works Doctrine And An Upside-Down Proviso, Wendy J. Gordon Mar 2010

Copyright's Derivative Works Doctrine And An Upside-Down Proviso, Wendy J. Gordon

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It is sometimes observed that questions of "justice in acquisition" do not much arise any more. However, judges face those questions on a daily basis in courtrooms adjudicating copyright and patent matters. In United States copyright law, for example, an intriguing dilemma regarding derivative works has developed that raises what appears to be a new issue regarding John Locke's sufficiency proviso.


Draft Of Copyright's Derivative Works Doctrine And An Upside-Down Proviso - 2010, Wendy J. Gordon Mar 2010

Draft Of Copyright's Derivative Works Doctrine And An Upside-Down Proviso - 2010, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

It is sometimes observed that questions of'justice in acquisition" do not much arise any more. However, judges face those questions on a daily basis in courtrooms adjudicating copyright and patent matters. In United States copyright law, for example, an intriguing dilemma regarding derivative works has developed that raises what appears to be a new issue regarding John Locke's sufficiency proviso.


Draft For Harmless Use: Gleaning From Fields Of Copyrighted Works - 2008, Wendy J. Gordon Oct 2008

Draft For Harmless Use: Gleaning From Fields Of Copyrighted Works - 2008, Wendy J. Gordon

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My inquiry is into whether harmless uses of property should give the property owner a right to sue. Under current law, harmless trespasses to land and to copyrights and patents do indeed give rise to liability. Should they? Neither moral philosophy, political science nor economics deals well with the harmless free-rider. The possibility I'm exploring-- just exploring at this stage-- is the following: that where inexhaustible products like information become a primary source of value, our institutions might serve us better if instead of mandating payment for harmless use via legal compulsion, payment for harmless use be left to the …


Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2004

Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon

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This essay, however, does not press any particular agenda; rather, it tries to make our thinking about the topic more flexible. It is my hope that some conduct-specific rule as was adopted in the defamation context will eventually be adopted for intellectual property. Copyright law cannot continue forever closing its eyes and hoping its house will stop being haunted.


Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2004

Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …


Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2003

Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon

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This article makes a simple suggestion. Copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Copyright. When new artists make transformative use of existing works in settings not characterized by pre-use commercial negotiations, copyright should avoid imposing a distorting burden.


New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon Mar 1999

New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

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Here is a ten-page excerpt from! a published piece, followed by some more recent and more random thoughts. Community is not civility. That is, I imagine my ideal community as one where people aren't always sweet to each other; I imagine a community where truth is more important than hurt feelings, and fun is more important than money. I imagine a community of individualists: raucous, iconoclastic. Steve Shiffrin's ROMANCE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT and Ed Baker's work seems to have the kind of community in mind that I am interested in.


Draft Of Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 1992

Draft Of Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

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Lawyers more than most people should be aware that what language calls "facts" are not necessarily equivalent to things that exist in the world. After all, when in ordinary conversation someone says "It's a fact that this [ X ] happened," the speaker usually means, "I believe the thing I describe has happened in the world". But when a litigator says something is a "fact" she often means only that a good faith argument can be made on behalf of its existence. Two sets of fact finders can look at the same event and come to diametrically opposed conclusions-- each …


Draft Of A Labor Theory Of Property - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon Aug 1990

Draft Of A Labor Theory Of Property - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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The Supreme Court in several recent cases has flirted with the notion that labor gives one an entitlement to ownership: a legal right to bar others from the fruits of that labor or to extract payment from them if they use the fruits without permission. Sometimes articulated in terms of "natural rights," and sometimes in terms of "fairness," this notion is at apparent odds with contract law's insistence that the only "fruits of labor" one is obligated to pay for are those one has agreed in advance to buy.


Proposed Organization And Detailed Table Of Contents - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon May 1990

Proposed Organization And Detailed Table Of Contents - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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For many years copyright was a backwater of the law. Perceived as an esoteric and narrow field beset by hypertechnical formalities, the discipline and its practitioners were largely isolated from scholarly and case law developments in other areas. There were exceptions of course. Well before the explosion of intellectual property litigation in the last twenty years, persons such as Zcharia Chaffee Jr. and Judge Learned Hand brought a wealth of learning and a broad perspective to copyright.


Draft Of New Versus Old Authors - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon May 1990

Draft Of New Versus Old Authors - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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Virtually all the issues canvassed above embody the tension that exists in seeking to honor the interests of two generations of creators. For example, the essay has discussed the need for new adaptive artists to have a copyright in their own productions and the dangers that the "subconscious copying rule" poses to new creators, particularly in an age of ubiquitous media.