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Full-Text Articles in Consumer Protection Law
Unfair Competition And Uncommon Sense, Rebecca Tushnet
Unfair Competition And Uncommon Sense, Rebecca Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article discusses Mark McKenna’s Testing Modern Trademark Law’s Theory of Harm as an important step forward in challenging trademark expansionism, going back to basics and asking us to assess for truth value several propositions that now seem so self-evident to lawyers and judges as to not require any empirical support at all. Like McKenna, the author believes that if the law looked for the evidence behind present axioms of harm, it would not find much there. McKenna and the author share an interest in empirical evidence on marketing and a desire to bring its insights to trademark law. But …
Why The Customer Isn’T Always Right: Producer-Based Limits On Rights Accretion In Trademark, Rebecca Tushnet
Why The Customer Isn’T Always Right: Producer-Based Limits On Rights Accretion In Trademark, Rebecca Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this article the author responds to James Gibson’s article Risk Aversion and Rights Accretion in Intellectual Property Law, which offers valuable insights into the extra-judicial dynamics that have contributed to the seemingly unending expansion of copyright and trademark rights over the past few decades. Her response focuses on the trademark side of that expansion. The theoretical basis for granting trademark rights is that, if consumers perceive that a mark or other symbol indicates that a single source is responsible for a product or service—whether through physical production, licensing, sponsorship, or other approval—then the law should give effect to …