Legal History Commons^™

Addressing The Divisions In Antitrust Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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This is the text of an interview conducted in writing by Professor A. Douglas Melamed, Stanford Law School.

Law And Neuroscience: Recommendations Submitted To The President's Bioethics Commission, Owen D. Jones, Richard J. Bonnie, B. J. Casey, Andre Davis, David L. Faigman, Morris Hoffman, Read Montague, Stephen J. Morse, Marcus E. Raichle, Jennifer A. Richeson, Elizabeth Scott, Laurence Steinberg, Kim Taylor-Thompson, Anthony Wagner, Gideon Yaffe

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President Obama charged the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to identify a set of core ethical standards in the neuroscience domain, including the appropriate use of neuroscience in the criminal-justice system. The Commission, in turn, called for comments and recommendations. The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience submitted a consensus statement, published here, containing 16 specific recommendations. These are organized within three main themes: 1) what steps should be taken to enhance the capacity of the criminal justice system to make sound decisions regarding the admissibility and weight of neuroscientific evidence?; 2) to what extent …

The Wires Go To War: The U.S. Experiment With Government Ownership Of The Telephone System During World War I, Michael A. Janson, Christopher S. Yoo

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One of the most distinctive characteristics of the U.S. telephone system is that it has always been privately owned, in stark contrast to the pattern of government ownership followed by virtually every other nation. What is not widely known is how close the United States came to falling in line with the rest of the world. For the one-year period following July 31, 1918, the exigencies of World War I led the federal government to take over the U.S. telephone system. A close examination of this episode sheds new light into a number of current policy issues. The history confirms …

The Normativity Of Copying In Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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Not all copying constitutes copyright infringement. Quite independent of fair use, copyright law requires that an act of copying be qualitatively and quantitatively significant enough or “substantially similar” for it to be actionable. Originating in the nineteenth century, and entirely the creation of courts, copyright’s requirement of “substantial similarity” has thus far received little attention as an independently meaningful normative dimension of the copyright entitlement. This Article offers a novel theory for copyright’s substantial-similarity requirement by placing it firmly at the center of the institution and its various goals and purposes. As a common-law-style device that mirrors the functioning of …

The Obligatory Structure Of Copyright Law: Unbundling The Wrong Of Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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No abstract provided.

Antitrust And Innovation: Where We Are And Where We Should Be Going, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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For large parts of their history intellectual property law and antitrust law have worked so as to undermine innovation competition by protecting too much. Antitrust policy often reflected exaggerated fears of competitive harm, and responded by developing overly protective rules that shielded inefficient businesses from competition at the expense of consumers. By the same token, the IP laws have often undermined rather than promoted innovation by granting IP holders rights far beyond what is necessary to create appropriate incentives to innovate.

Perhaps the biggest intellectual change in recent decades is that we have come to see patents less as a …

The Two Federal Circuits, R. Polk Wagner

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No abstract provided.

"A Teaching, Suggestion, Or Motivation To Combine": Bringing Structure And Clarity To The Obviousness Analysis, R. Polk Wagner

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No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Dmca, R. Polk Wagner

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patents, Law and economics, prosecution history estoppel, doctrine of equivalents, ex ante, ex post, default rules, PTO, Federal Circuit, patent prosecution, patent litigation, intellectual property, patent reform, patent administration, patent office

Globalization And The Design Of International Institutions, Cary Coglianese

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In an increasingly globalized world, international rules and organizations have grown ever more crucial to the resolution of major economic and social concerns. How can leaders design international institutions that will effectively solve global regulatory problems? This paper confronts this question by presenting three major types of global problems, distinguishing six main categories of institutional forms that can be used to address these problems, and showing how the effectiveness of international institutions depends on achieving “form-problem” fit. Complicating that fit will be the tendency of nation states to prefer institutional forms that do little to constrain their sovereignty. Yet the …

Filters And The First Amendment, R. Polk Wagner

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Internet content filters -- promising a technological solution to the uniquely social problem of widespread availability of adults-only content on the Internet -- appear to shift the debate over control of "cyberporn" from the legislative to the technical. Yet a growing number of commentators are expressing serious reservations about the free speech implications of filters. In this Article, I note that the ever-changing relationship between technology, network economics, and legal doctrine in the new economic and ideological marketplace of Cyberspace will fundamentally impact any constitutional analysis. I argue that the existing literature's analytic reliance on expansive concepts of state action …

The Myth Of Private Ordering: Rediscovering Legal Realism In Cyberspace, Margaret Jane Radin, R. Polk Wagner

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While Cyberspace is, by now, well-recognized as a social and commercial environment of great promise, there is considerable debate about the form of governance that will best meet the needs of this new medium. Much of the present discussion casts this debate in stark terms?"top-down" hierarchical rules versus spontaneous "bottom-up" coordination?with self-ordering based on contracts and private agreements rather than public laws appearing both preferable and more likely to evolve. Following up on arguments presented by Professors Fisher and Elkin-Koren in this symposium, Radin and Wagner point out that the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up obscures that a self-ordering regime …

The Newest Property: Reproductive Technologies And The Concept Of Parenthood, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

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No abstract provided.