Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Copyright And Federalism: Why State Waiver Of Sovereign Immunity Is The Best Remedy For State Copyright Infringement, Leroy J. Ellis V

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

When a photographer intentionally takes a picture of a subject, or a writer puts a story to paper, the resulting works are protected by copyright. That protection is bolstered after the authors register their works with the Copyright Office. All private parties, from individuals to corporations, can be sued for infringing on the work should they use it without pay or permission.

However, what happens when the infringer is not a private party? What happens when the state or a state entity is the infringer? What happens when a public university decides to use a copyright owner’s work without pay …

Help Was Not On The Way: Intellectual Property Liability Relief In A Pandemic Era, Kim Vu-Dinh

Faculty Scholarship

On January 21, 2020, the United States recorded its first case of COVID-19. By April of that same year, numerous hospitals across the nation had exhausted entire reserves of personal protective equipment (PPE), with looming uncertainty as to when they would be replenished. As infection numbers increased exponentially, global demand for some types of PPE increased by 1000%.

Volunteers across the nation assembled teams of makers—some professionals, but also scores of amateurs—to craft the critical equipment needed to slow down the onslaught of the pandemic. From creating cloth masks to ventilator pistons, nonprofits and everyday citizens were able to partially …

Proving Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell

Faculty Scholarship

Proof that a defendant actually copied from a copyrighted work is a critical part of a claim for copyright infringement. Indeed, absent such copying, there is no infringement. The most common method of proving copying involves the use of circumstantial evidence, consisting of proof that a defendant had “access” to the protected work, and a showing of “similarities” between the copy and the protected work. In inferring copying from the combination of such evidence, courts have for many decades developed a framework known as the “inverse ratio rule,” which allows them to modulate the level of proof needed on access …