Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

An Analysis For The Valuation Of Venture Capital-Funded Startup Firm Patents, John Dubiansky

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In an era where forces such as the Bayh Dole act and the rise of the venture capital industry are reshaping the manner in which innovations are brought to market, the role of intellectual property in the financing of new ventures is becoming increasingly important. The investment community requires a better understanding of the risks of patent-based transactions as such deals become more prevalent. This paper addresses that need by explaining an analysis for the valuation of startup firm-held patents. The paper considers the commonly employed methods of patent valuation, and offers an analysis which considers Legal, Technical, and Technology-Market …

Catch 1201: A Legislative History And Content Analysis Of The Dmca Exemption Proceedings, Bill D. Herman, Oscar H. Gandy

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17 USC Section 1201(a)(1) prohibits circumventing a technological protection measure (TPM) that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. In the name of mitigating the innocent casualties of this new ban, Congress constructed a triennial rulemaking, administered by the Register of Copyrights, to determine temporary exemptions. This paper considers the legislative history of this rulemaking, and it reports the results of a systematic content analysis of its 2000 and 2003 proceedings.

Inspired by the literature on political agendas, policymaking institutions, venue shifting, and theories of delegation, we conclude that the legislative motivations for Section 1201 were laundered through international treaties, …

Password Theft: Rethinking An Old Crime In A New Era, Daniel S. Shamah

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This is a discussion of the legal and economic ramifications of password theft.

A New Weapon Against Piracy: Patent Protection As An Alternative Strategy For Enforcement Of Digital Rights, Dennis S. Fernandez, Matthew Chivvis, Mengfei Huang

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This article illustrates how patents and copyrights complement each other to provide a better defense for creative works. Copyrights protect expression, and patents protect underlying functions. Currently, the one-time strengths of copyrights are being eroded as courts allow new technologies to flourish which enable digital reproduction and piracy. This has encouraged companies and industries to move increasingly to patent protection and any company that fails to pursue this trend may be left behind. In sum, patents are a worthwhile strategy because they assist copyright owners in controlling the technology that enables infringement while copyrights alone would leave a company vulnerable …

Digital Wars -- Legal Battles And Economic Bottlenecks In The Digital Information Industries, Curt A. Hessler

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The Digital Age has spawned major legal battles over the fundamental principles of intellectual property law and antitrust law. These diverse struggles can best be analyzed using the basic norm of "value added" from neo-classical normative economics. This analysis suggests that current intellectual property doctirnes provide excessive protection and current antitrust doctrines remain awkward in dealing with the cross-market leveraging of monopoly power in the presence of "natural monopolies" created by network effects.

Harry Potter And The Three-Second Crime: Are We Vanishing The De Minimis Defense From Copyright Law?, Julie Cromer

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No abstract provided.

A Powers-Based Approach To Idea-Submission Law, Larissa Katz

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This paper provides a unified account of idea-submission law in terms of legal powers. It argues that the duty upon a recipient of a novel and original idea results from the exercise of a legal power that the law confers on originators in order to enable them to share their ideas selectively. This paper contributes to our understanding of idea-submission law and to private law theory more generally in a number of ways that have not been addressed in the literature. First, it systematically reveals the lack of fit between the case law and conventional legal theories for the protection …

The Pull Of Patents, Brett M. Frischmann

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The conventional view of the role of patents in the university research context (and more generally) is that patent-enabled exclusivity improves the supply-side functioning of markets for university research results (and inventions more generally) as well as those markets further downstream for derivative commercial end-products. The reward, prospect, and commercialization theories of patent law take patent-enabled exclusivity as the relevant means for fixing a supply-side problem—the undersupply of private investment in the production of patentable subject matter or in the development and commercialization of patentable subject matter that would occur in the absence of patent-enabled exclusivity. Put another way, patents …

Digital Wars -- Legal Battles And Economic Bottlenecks In The Digital Information Industries, Curt A. Hessler

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The Digital Revolution has created the apparent anomaly that information, though very cheap to create and near costless to share, is managed by industries that are increasingly concentrated and roiled by endless legal warfare. This paper surveys the major legal battles by subjecting all of them to the familiar norm of "maximizing economic value added", as defined by neo-classical "welfare economics". The various legal wars are traced to defects and confusions in current legal approaches to intellectual property (the "property wars") and to antitrust doctrines (the "monopoly wars").

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

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No abstract provided.

Building Universal Digital Libraries: An Agenda For Copyright Reform , Hannibal B. Travis

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This article proposes a series of copyright reforms to pave the way for digital library projects like Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and Google Print, which promise to make much of the world’s knowledge easily searchable and accessible from anywhere. Existing law frustrates digital library growth and development by granting overlapping, overbroad, and near-perpetual copyrights in books, art, audiovisual works, and digital content. Digital libraries would benefit from an expanded public domain, revitalized fair use doctrine and originality requirement, rationalized systems for copyright registration and transfer, and a new framework for compensating copyright owners for online infringement without imposing derivative …

Thieves In Cyberspace: Examining Music Piracy And Copyright Law Deficiencies In Russia As It Enters The Digital Age, Michael F. Mertens

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The article discusses broadly the music piracy problem in Russia, the current state of Russia’s copyright laws, and how its laws and problems compare to the U.S. and the rest of the world. In particular, the article focuses on music piracy through the Internet and how it has exploded in Russia. One of the websites I target is the infamous Allofmp3.com, which has attracted a large amount of U.S. attention in recent times by consumers as well as lawmakers. The article analyzes the legislative and enforcement deficiencies in Russia that led to the enormous problem with traditional music piracy and …

Sharing Potential And The Potential For Sharing: Open Source Licensing As A Legal And Economic Modality For The Dissemination Of Renewable Energy Technology, Jason Wiener

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No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Rights In Digital Media: A Comparative Analysis Of Legal Protection, Technological Measures And New Business Models Under E.U. And U.S. Law, Nicola Lucchi

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The production of digital content is a phenomenon which has completely changed the conditions of access to knowledge. Within this framework it becomes even more important to find and to formulate a new settlement for intellectual property rights balancing contrasted rights. Owners of the old technology and policy makers have found two different solutions and remedies for intellectual property rights: legal and technological. When both remedies work together any rights that a consumer may have under copyright law could be replaced by a unilaterally defined contractual term and condition. To balance this inequity this article analyses different solutions under U.S. …

The Drm Dilemma: Re-Aligning Rights Under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Jacqueline D. Lipton

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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’) prevents unauthorized copying and distribution of digital copyright works by regulating devices that can be used to circumvent Digital Rights Management (‘DRM’) measures that are used to restrict access to those works. A significant problem is that those devices, like many new technologies, have the potential to be used for both socially harmful and socially beneficial purposes. There is no obvious way for Congress to regulate circumvention devices to prevent the social harms, while at the same time facilitating the social benefits they might provide. Recent judicial interpretations of the DMCA have unsurprisingly erred …

An Economic Theory Of Infrastructure And Commons Management, Brett M. Frischmann

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In this article, Professor Frischmann combines a number of current debates across many disciplinary lines, all of which examine from different perspectives whether certain resources should be managed through a regime of private property or through a regime of open access. Frischmann develops and applies a theory that demonstrates there are strong economic arguments for managing and sustaining openly accessible infrastructure. The approach he takes differs from conventional analyses in that he focuses extensively on demand-side considerations and fully explores how infrastructure resources generate value for consumers and society. As a result, the theory brings into focus the social value …

Copyright Law, The Production Of Creative Works And Cultural Growth In Cyberspace , Alina Ng

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The Internet has affected information flow in copyrighted content in a profound manner. Authors and artists are enabled through the Internet to assert greater control over the flow of information in their works as these new technologies offer new and different distribution channels for content. These new technologies also allow consumers to use content in ways, which had not been anticipated by the copyright industries. This paper presents that copyright law was developed for a specific purpose, which was to encourage learning and growth. As new technologies emerge and as content industries experience changes in information flow in copyrighted works, …

Copyright Law, The Production Of Creative Works And Cultural Growth In Cyberspace , Alina Ng

ExpressO

The Internet has affected information flow in copyrighted content in a profound manner. Authors and artists are enabled through the Internet to assert greater control over the flow of information in their works as these new technologies offer new and different distribution channels for content. These new technologies also allow consumers to use content in ways, which had not been anticipated by the copyright industries. This paper presents that copyright law was developed for a specific purpose, which was to encourage learning and growth. As new technologies emerge and as content industries experience changes in information flow in copyrighted works, …

Block Me Not: Are Patented Genes 'Essential Facilities'?, Shamnad Basheer

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The biopharmaceutical industry is characterized by the ‘cumulative innovation’ paradigm, wherein the discovery of a gene sequence is only the first step. In order to convert such sequence information into viable products, tests and cures for genetic conditions and diseases, vast amounts of additional time, effort and money have to be spent. It is feared that patents over upstream gene sequences may ‘block’ further downstream research and consequently adversely impact drug discovery, as many diseases today are known to have genetic origins.

This ‘blocking’ or ‘restricted access’ issue has been the subject of several important papers and a wide array …

Material Vulnerabilities: Data Privacy, Corporate Information Security And Securities Regulation, Andrea M. Matwyshyn

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This article undertakes a normative and empirical legal inquiry into the manner information security vulnerabilities are being addressed through law and in the marketplace. Specifically, this article questions the current legislative paradigm for information security regulation by presenting a critique grounded in information security and cryptography theory. Consequently, this article advocates shifting our regulatory approach to a process-based security paradigm that focuses on improving security of our system as a whole. Finally, this article argues that in order to accomplish this shift with least disruption to current legal and economic processes, expanding an existing set of well-functioning legal structures is …

Why "Bad" Patents Survive In The Market And How Should We Change?--The Private And Social Costs Of Patents, Jay P. Kesan

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In this paper, we formally demonstrate that incorrectly issued patents can survive in the market without judicial review, even when the invention is neither novel nor non-obvious. We support this contention by presenting a game theoretic model that studies the interaction between the patentee and an alleged infringer/challenger. Using this model, we demonstrate the impact of the transaction costs in the patent system at the administrative stage in the Patent Office and at the enforcement stage in the courts, and highlight the inability in our current system to mount effective challenges to improperly granted patents in the current system. We …

Keeping Score: The Struggle For Music Copyright, Michael W. Carroll

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Inspired by the passionate contemporary debates about music copyright, this Article investigates how, when, and why music first came within copyright's domain. Although music publishers and recording companies are among the most aggressive advocates for strong copyright protection today, when copyright law was first invented in eighteenth-century England, music publishers resisted its extension to music. This Article sheds light on a series of early legal disputes concerning printed music that yield important insights into original understandings of copyright law and music's role in society. By focusing attention on this understudied episode, this Article demonstrates that the concept of copyright was …