Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Copyright Basics, B. Douglas Robbins

B. Douglas Robbins

In this paper we discuss the fundamentals of copyright law: what sort of works are protected by copyright, what sort of works are not protected, how copyright protection operates, the term of copyright protection, and what the consequences are for copyright infringement.

The Crimes Of Fashion: The Effects Of Trademark And Copyright Infringement In The Fashion Industry, Carolyn Marcelo

Senior Honors Theses

Counterfeits of designer merchandise continue to be made and sold throughout the world causing drastic social and economic outcomes everywhere. Despite the illegality of manufacturing and distributing counterfeit goods, this business has far-reaching effects that society is not generally aware of. The evils of counterfeiting luxury goods include forced child labor, drug trafficking, and international terrorism as well as loss of billions of dollars in revenue to legitimate businesses and governments. The ancient Latin phrase “Caveat emptor” “Let the buyer beware” is still relevant today. Being made aware and being warned, society may be motivated to shut down this illicit …

A Trade Secret Approach To Protecting Traditional Knowledge, Deepa Varadarajan

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that the doctrinal and normative divide between traditional knowledge protection and intellectual property law has been overemphasized, and that trade secret law can help narrow it. First, in terms of doctrinal fit, trade secret doctrine offers a viable model for protecting a subset of traditional knowledge that is not already publicly available. Broadly speaking, trade secret law imposes liability for the wrongful acquisition, use, or disclosure of valuable information that is the subject of reasonable secrecy efforts. Second, in addition to its practical import, the underlying justifications of trade secret law offer a useful normative guide for …

Top Tens In 2010: Patent And Trademark Cases, Stephen Mcjohn

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Top Tens In 2010: Copyright And Trade Secret Cases, Stephen Mcjohn

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Brand Renegades, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

Recent appearances of trademarks in popular culture-in rap lyrics, on reality TV shows, even in youth riots have raised the question whether the owners of those trademarks might pursue legal remedies to protect their brands from unwanted social associations. This Article argues that they cannot, and that we should understand this limitation on trademark rights as grounded in a principle that consumption of certain brands is an expressive act that First Amendment principles place outside trademark owners' control.

The Ethics Of Unbranding, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the ethical implications of the phenomenon of "unbranding" that has recently been discussed in popular and scholarly literature. It compares two extant definitions of unbranding and examines each under alternative ethical theories of trademark law, specifically deontological and consequentialist theories. With respect to each of these theories, the Essay examines the ethical questions raised by the existence of asymmetric information between brand owners and consumers. This includes asymmetries not only with regard to information about products, but also with regard to information about consumer decision-making processes. The latter asymmetry presents conflicts between deontological and consequentialist conclusions regarding …

Originality Proxies: Toward A Theory Of Copyright And Creativity, Eva E. Subotnik

Faculty Publications

This article contends that a definitive account of originality as a legal construct is not possible and that, as a result, the current low threshold for originality should be maintained. Under this analysis, most photographs, so long as they comply with certain requirements, should be granted protection, at the very least, against exact copying (for example, through digital copying and pasting). Arriving at this conclusion, however, requires a return to first principles, that is, to the copyright concepts of authorship and originality. These concepts saw their most recent articulation by the Supreme Court in the 1991 landmark decision of Feist …

Life After Bilski, Mark A. Lemley, Michael Risch, Ted Sichelman, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

In Bilski v. Kappos, the Supreme Court declined calls to categorically exclude business methods—or any technology—from the patent law. It also rejected as the sole test of subject matter eligibility the Federal Circuit’s deeply-flawed machine-or-transformation test, under which no process is patentable unless it is tied to a particular machine or transforms an article to another state or thing. Subsequent developments threaten to undo that holding, however. Relying on the Court’s description of the Federal Circuit test as a “useful and important clue,” the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patent litigants, and district courts have all continued to rely on …

Biasing Brands, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

The dominant search-costs model of trademark law posits that consumers choose products to satisfy their preferences by analytically mapping those preferences to product information that trademarks efficiently provide. This Article tests these descriptive claims against empirical and theoretical research in marketing and consumer psychology, particularly the concept of "brand equity": the value to a firm or its customers of a brand and of the firm's efforts to build and maintain that brand.

Internally complex brand equity models, juxtaposed with empirical findings in related psychology and marketing research, challenge the descriptive accuracy of the search-costs model. In particular, branding efforts can …

Can Law Improve Prevention And Treatment Of Cancer?, Roger Magnusson, Lawrence O. Gostin, David Studdert

O'Neill Institute Papers

The December 2011 issue of Public Health (the Journal of the Royal Society for Public Health) contains a symposium entitled: Legislate, Regulate, Litigate? Legal approaches to the prevention and treatment of cancer. This symposium explores the possibilities for using law and regulation – both internationally and at the national level – as the policy instrument for preventing and improving the treatment of cancer and other leading non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In this editorial, we argue that there is an urgent need for more legal scholarship on cancer and other leading NCDs, as well as greater dialogue between lawyers, public health practitioners …