Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Us China Trade Dispute Over Intellectual Property, Mozi Luo

Master's Projects

How have Section 301 investigations impacted trade relations between China and the U.S. in clean energy area, and between Japan and the U.S. in semiconductor and auto part areas, and does the impact provide a guide for the possible outcome of the upcoming Section 301 investigation of China?

After President Donald Trump’s memorandum on August 14, 2017 stating that China’s behavior regarding intellectual property rights (IPR) and the high technology industries adversely influences the U.S. economy, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) declared the initiation of a section 301 investigation of China on the topic ...

Symbols, Systems, And Software As Intellectual Property: Time For Contu, Part Ii?, Timothy K. Armstrong

Michigan Technology Law Review

The functional nature of computer software underlies two propositions that were, until recently, fairly well settled in intellectual property law: first, that software, like other utilitarian articles, may qualify for patent protection; and second, that the scope of copyright protection for software is comparatively limited. Both propositions have become considerably shakier as a result of recent court decisions. Following Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the lower courts have invalidated many software patents as unprotectable subject matter. Meanwhile, Oracle America v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2014) extended far more expansive ...

Why The Copyright Act Expressly Preempts State-Level Public Performance Rights In Pre-1972 Recordings, James Fahringer

Michigan Technology Law Review

Over the past several years, two former bandmates in the 1960s rock group, The Turtles, have initiated several lawsuits against the popular music streaming services, Pandora and Sirius XM, arguing that the band owns common law copyrights in the sound recordings of its songs, and that these state-level copyrights grant the band an exclusive public performance right in its sound recordings. If accepted, this argument has the potential to significantly distort federal copyright policy because states would not be constrained by any of the balancing features of the Copyright Act, including Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors for Internet ...

Dh Brothers Industries (Pty) Limited Vs. Olivine Industries (Pty) Limited (Appeal No. 74/2010) [2012] Zmsc 17, Chanda N. Tembo

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett

Student Theses

This paper seeks to establish the reasons why federal copyright protection was created, discuss the shifts in reasoning behind major amendments, and explore its effects on copyright holders and the public, with a slight focus on the music industry. Federal copyright has existed in the United States since the late 1700s, with the creation of the Copyright Act in 1790. Adopted from the first copyright law ever created, the English Statute of Anne (1710), the Copyright Act was meant to protect citizens from piracy in a world where the risk of such a thing was rapidly increasing. The stated objective ...

Lost Profits In A Multicomponent World, Bernard Chao

Boston College Law Review

Given our adversarial system, it is not surprising that plaintiffs advance creative damages theories that would help them maximize their recoveries. In patent law, one recurring tactic for patentees is to seek remedies based on the entire infringing product instead of the specific feature covered by the patent. This distinction can significantly inflate remedies because modern multicomponent products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Thus, entire products are orders of magnitude larger, more complex, and more valuable than individual features.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has sensibly rejected attempts to base patent remedies on entire products ...

Harmonizing The Tension Between The First Amendment And Publicity Rights And Finding The Right Balance: Discerning How Much Freedom Is Warranted And What Needs Protection, William Buchsbaum

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

This paper examines the tension between the First Amendment and Publicity Rights considering why and how friction is emerging, the legal underpinnings and theories behind the development of publicity rights and how to reconcile this with values raised in support of the First Amendment. This collision course of rights occurs where property interests have vested in human identity itself which brings us face to face with the outer limits of free speech and expression under the First Amendment and evens tests the notion of how we define speech. The paper takes a dive into some of the currently arising issues ...

The Court Must Play Its Interpretative Role: Defending The Defend Trade Secrets Act’S Extraterritorial Reach, Jada M. Colon

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

The exact reach of the Defend Trade Secrets Act’s extraterritoriality provision has yet to be interpreted by the courts. If United States securities, trademark, and antitrust law serves as any indication of what is to be expected, the Defend Trade Secrets Act may be subject to an inconsistent array of interpretation. When faced with interpreting the extraterritorial scope of the Defend Trade Secrets Act for the first time, the court must set a strong precedent by enacting a single, uniform effects test that will not falter when applied in different circumstances and by different circuits. Courts interpreting United States ...

2nd Place Contest Entry: Piracy, Policy, And Pandora: Outdated Copyright In A Digital World, Stephanie Caress

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Stephanie Caress' submission for the 2018 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won second place. She wrote about current copyright laws and digital distribution practices and how they can be improved for creators and consumers of music.

Stephanie is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Music and Strategic & Corporate Communication. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Jessica Sternfeld.

Proximate Vs. Geographic Limits On Patent Damages, Stephen Yelderman

IP Theory

The exclusive rights of a U.S. patent are limited in two important ways. First, a patent has a technical scope—only the products and methods set out in the patent’s claims may constitute infringement. Second, a patent has a geographic scope—making, using, or selling the products or methods described in the patent’s claims will only constitute infringement if that activity takes place in the United States. These boundaries are foundational features of the patent system: there can be no liability for U.S. patent infringement without an act that falls within both the technical and geographic ...

Balances Of Power Between Ip Creators: Ethical Issues In Scholarly Communication, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Presentations, Posters, and Videos

Scholarly communications often values free access above all else, but what happens when that drive for openness conflicts with ethical issues of consent and ownership? In this CARL IG Showcase panel, members of SCORE (Scholarly Communication and Open Resources for Education) will discuss some of the thorny issues of ethics and scholarly communication, including: consent (particularly among diverse communities outside of the institution) and digital collections, students as information creators / library as publisher, and decolonizing who we consider scholars and what we consider scholarship. This panel will feature speakers who will share current discussions and personal stories on issues pertinent ...

Law School News: New Faculty For Fall '18 (04-12-2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Boai 15 Survey Report, Nick Shockey, Heather Joseph, Melissa Hagemann

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative provided an excellent opportunity to take stock of global progress toward open access and to gauge the main obstacles still remaining to the widespread adoption of open access policies and practices. As part of this process, feedback was solicited through an open survey that was disseminated online, and that received responses from individuals in 60 countries around the world.

Markers of progress are clear. The lack of understanding of the concept of open access and a myriad of misconceptions that were pervasive at the time of the BOAI’s original convening ...

Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, And Precision Medicine, Jacob S. Sherkow, Jorge L. Contreras

IP Theory

The fruits of the biotechnology revolution are beginning to be harvested. Recent regulatory approvals of a variety of advanced therapies—Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), and patisiran—have ushered in an age of “precision medicine” treatments that target patients’ specific genetic, physiological, and environmental profiles rather than generalized diagnoses of disease. Therapies like these may soon be supplemented by gene editing technologies such as CRISPR, which could enable the targeted eradication of deleterious genetic variants to improve human health. But the intellectual property (IP) surrounding precision therapies and their foundational technology remain controversial. Precision therapies ultimately rely—and are roughly congruent ...

Emojis And The Law, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

Emojis are an increasingly important way we express ourselves. Though emojis may be cute and fun, their usage can lead to misunderstandings with significant legal stakes—such as whether someone should be obligated by contract, liable for sexual harassment, or sent to jail.

Our legal system has substantial experience interpreting new forms of content, so it should be equipped to handle emojis. Nevertheless, some special attributes of emojis create extra interpretative challenges. This Article identifies those attributes and proposes how courts should handle them.

One particularly troublesome interpretative challenge arises from the different ways platforms depict emojis that are nominally ...

Internet-Of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, And The Art Of A Clean Deal: Who Owns What?, Chris Carr, Dan Harris

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Internet-of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, and the Art of a Clean Deal: Who Owns What?

Reputational Economies Of Scale, Daniel M. Klerman

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

For many years, most scholars have assumed that the strength of reputational incentives is positively correlated with the frequency of repeat play. Firms that sell more products or services were thought more likely to be trustworthy than those that sell less because they have more to lose if consumers decide they have behaved badly. That assumption has been called into question by recent work that shows that, under the standard infinitely repeated game model of reputation, reputational economies of scale will occur only under special conditions, such as monopoly, because larger firms not only have more to lose from behaving ...

Call For Standardization In Patent Claim Drafting, Tao Zhang, Daniel J. Sherwinter, Dov Greenbaum

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Call for Standardization in Patent Claim Drafting

Bridge Over Bridgeport: An Incremental Change In Case Law Of Sampling, Eric Harbeson

American Music Research Center Faculty Contributions

The contentious law and ethics of sampling saw a dramatic, if incremental development in the case of VMG Salsoul v. Madonna Louise Ciccone. The Ninth Circuit found that a de minimis argument can be used in sampling cases for the first time since the previously dominant Bridgeport v. Dimension Films. The case sets up a circuit split with the 6th circuit, one that could bode well for those wishing to engage in musical appropriation art.

Citrus Groves In The Cloud: Is Cryptocurrency Cloud Mining A Security?, Darren J. Sandler

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Citrus Groves in the Cloud: Is Cryptocurrency Cloud Mining a Security?