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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Consumer Protection Law
Intel's Alleged Schemes Affected U.S. Consumers, Robert H. Lande
Intel's Alleged Schemes Affected U.S. Consumers, Robert H. Lande
All Faculty Scholarship
This short piece explains how the first unit discounts or rebates allegedly given by Intel on their X86 chips could harm competition, innovation, and PC purchasers in this crucial $33 billion/year market. For these reasons, their discounts or rebates could violate European Competition law and U.S. Antitrust law.
The (Boundedly) Rational Basis Of Trademark Liability, Jeremy N. Sheff
The (Boundedly) Rational Basis Of Trademark Liability, Jeremy N. Sheff
Faculty Publications
This article argues that trademark infringement and dilution are best understood as commercial behavior that manipulates the cognitive biases of consumers, and as such threatens to render their heuristic judgments persistently inaccurate. In this view, trademark liability—whether imposed under the label of infringement or dilution—serves neither to protect property rights of trademark owners, nor to protect them against the unfair trade practices of competitors, but to shape consumer markets in such a way as to conform to the innate cognitive processes of boundedly rational consumers. The trademark regime can thus be understood as a legal apparatus designed (albeit perhaps unconsciously) …
It Depends On What The Meaning Of "False" Is: Falsity And Misleadingness In Commercial Speech Doctrine, Rebecca Tushnet
It Depends On What The Meaning Of "False" Is: Falsity And Misleadingness In Commercial Speech Doctrine, Rebecca Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
While scholarship regarding the Supreme Court's noncommercial speech doctrine has often focused on the level of protection for truthful, non-misleading commercial speech, scholars have paid little attention to the exclusion of false or misleading commercial speech from all First Amendment protection. Examining the underpinnings of the false and misleading speech exclusion illuminates the practical difficulties that abolishing the commercial speech doctrine would pose. Through a series of fact patterns in trademark and false advertising cases, this piece demonstrates that defining what is false or misleading is often debatable. If commercial speech were given First Amendment protection, consumer protection and First …
Trademark Law And Status Signaling: Tattoos For The Privileged, Jeffrey L. Harrison
Trademark Law And Status Signaling: Tattoos For The Privileged, Jeffrey L. Harrison
UF Law Faculty Publications
The motivations for buying a good or service are highly complex. At the most basic level, people buy goods because of what the goods do or because of the aesthetic elements they embody. More technically, buyers derive utility from the "functional" quality of these goods. Another motivation relates to what the goods "say" about the buyer. Here, the good is a signaling device. Signaling is not new, of course, and can indicate anything from social class to political leanings.
This Essay addresses the issue of whether it should be public policy to subsidize this type of person-to-person status signaling. This …
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 …