Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Cuarto Congreso Nacional De Organismos Públicos Autónomos, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Memorias del Cuarto Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autónomos

"El papel de los Organismos Públicos Autónomos en la Consolidación de la Democracia"

The Mechanical License And The Origins Of Regulatory Copyright, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a review of Neil Weinstock Netanel’s Copyright’s Paradox (2008).

Originality, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay we introduce a model of copyright law that calibrates authors’ rights and liabilities to the level of originality in their works. We advocate this model as a substitute for the extant regime that unjustly and inefficiently grants equal protection to all works satisfying the “modicum of creativity” standard. Under our model, highly original works will receive enhanced protection and their authors will also be sheltered from suits by owners of preexisting works. Conversely, authors of less original works will receive diminished protection and incur greater exposure to copyright liability. We operationalize this proposal by designing separate rules …

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Katherine J. Strandburg, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann

Katherine J. Strandburg

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.

When Less Liability May Mean More Precaution: The Case Of Nanotechnology, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

The heart of the Article is an exploration of the possible role of common law tort liability in both encouraging and deterring voluntary, precautionary study of new products generally and nanotechnology products in particular. A key variable in considering liability's role as an incentive or deterrent to testing is the manufacturer's subjective assessment of the probability that any injuries from its product would be detected by the injured parties and successfully attributed to the product absent research by the manufacturer itself on the adverse effects of the product. Another key variable is the legal standard for tort liability, and specifically …

The Contextual Rationality Of The Precautionary Principle, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

This article defines the precautionary principle (PP) primarily based on what it is not: it is not quantitative cost-benefit analysis (CBA) or cost-cost analysis of the sort we associate with the Office of Management and Budget in the United States and U.S. policymaking and policy discourse generally. In this definition, the PP is a form of analysis in which the costs of a possible environmental or health risk are not quantified, or if they are, any quantification is likely to be inadequate to capture the full extent of the costs of not taking regulatory measures to mitigate or avoid the …

Applying Old Theories To New Problems: How Adverse Possession Can Help Solve The Orphan Works Crisis, Megan L. Bibb

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note focuses on orphan works--works whose copyright owners cannot be found--and the problems they create for libraries and archives that wish to preserve and facilitate access to them. After describing the legal basis for the orphan works problem, the Note analyzes and critiques proposed legislative and scholarly solutions. After concluding that prior solutions fail to adequately address the needs of libraries and archives, the Note offers a solution based on the policy rationales underlying the traditional property concept of adverse possession, since the justifications that supported the advent of the adverse possession doctrine can also be applied to the …

Accession And Original Ownership, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Although first possession is generally assumed to be the dominant means of establishing original ownership of property, there is a second but less studied principle for initiating ownership, called accession, which awards new resources to the owner of existing property most prominently connected to the new resource. Accession applies across a wide variety of areas, from determining rights to baby animals and growing crops to determining ownership of derivative rights under intellectual property laws. Accession shares common features with first possession, in that both principles assign ownership uniquely in a way that imposes minimal information cost burdens on society. But …

Patents, Property, And Competition Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The decision to regulate involves the identification of markets where simple assignment of property rights is not sufficient to ensure satisfactory competitive results, usually because some type of market failure obtains. By contrast, if property rights are well defined when they are initially created and can subsequently be traded to some reasonably competitive equilibrium, then regulation is thought not to be necessary. In such cases the antitrust laws have a significant role to play in ensuring that the market can be as competitive as free trading allows. One problem with the patent system is that once a patent is granted …

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.

Of Coase And Comics, Or, The Comedy Of Copyright, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay responds to There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, by Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman. It argues that case studies of disciplines and domains that may be governed by intellectual property regimes are invaluable tools for comparative analysis of the respective roles of law and other forms of social order. The Essay examines the case of stand-up comedy under a lens that is somewhat broader than the one used by the authors of the original study, one that takes into account not only the social norms of individual …

Notes On A Geography Of Knowledge, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Law and knowledge jointly occupy a metaphorical landscape. Understanding that landscape is essential to understanding the full complexity of knowledge law. This Article identifies some landmarks in that landscape, which it identifies as forms of legal practice: several recent cases involving intellectual property licenses, including the recent patent law decision in Quanta v. LG Electronics and the open source licensing decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer. The Article offers a preliminary framework for exploring the territories of knowledge practice in which those legal landmarks appear.

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Katherine J. Strandburg, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann

Brett Frischmann

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.