Digital Commons Network^™

Legendary Houses: Trademarks, Transformation, And Ballroom Culture, Elizabeth L. Rosenblatt

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Generative Identity Theft: Criminalizing Deepfakes Using The Right Of Publicity, Dustin Marlan

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing Patent Pledges: A Case Study In The Vaccine And Biopharma Space, Ana Santos Rutschman

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright In Characters: A Proposal For Reform, Michael W. Carroll

Akron Law Review

No abstract provided.

Library E-Book Licensing And State Law Reform, Kincaid Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Libraries don’t “buy” most e-books the way they buy print books; they license them. That reality is at the crossroads of budgetary constraints and patron satisfaction in modern libraries. With print, a library typically pays once, owns the copy, and lends it until it wears out. With e-books, publishers and intermediaries, like platforms such as OverDrive, commonly offer time-limited or loan-limit-ed terms (for example, a license that expires after a set number of checkouts or after a set period), can impose embargoes, and can set prices far above consumer retail. Libraries argue these terms frustrate their public mission and make …

Fisc Opinion Digest 2022 - 2025, Alejandra Gutierrez

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This digest summarizes selected opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISC-R) regarding Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It covers the FISC’s annual review of intelligence agencies’ Section 702 certifications and the FISC and FISC-R’s opinions related to the statutory definition of Electronic Communications Service Providers (ECSPs). Publicly available opinions are posted on the FISC website, and further resources are available through the Intel.gov IC on the Record Database, a website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Mitigating Data Privacy Risks In Political Micro-Targeting Through Gdpr-Compliant Federated Learning: Lessons From The Cambridge Analytica Controversy, Jingfan (Serena) Xiao

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

Political micro-targeting employs granular data analytics to deliver hyper- personalized political messaging, raising fundamental tensions between electoral strategy, data privacy, and democratic accountability. The Facebook- Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed significant gaps in pre-GDPR data protection laws, highlighting the risks of unchecked algorithmic profiling in shaping voter behavior. However, as micro-targeting evolves under more sophisticated AI-driven systems, a pressing question emerges: should AI- generated political messaging qualify for First Amendment protection? This Article introduces the concept of speech certainty, arguing that speech must be intentional and cognitively understood by the speaker at the moment of articulation to warrant constitutional protection. Under …

From Player Piano To Generative Ai: Artificial Expression And The Law Of Copyright, Douglas Lind, Adrienne Holz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

American copyright law has experienced challenges and sometimes faltered when confronting mechanical reproduction. This Article retraces the rise and diffusion of the player piano and the phonograph, examining how they reshaped the making and listening to music. As these technologies spread throughout American society more rapidly than copyright law could adjust, courts misclassified piano rolls and records as merely mechanics. Reducing these new fixations to machinery rather than embodiments of human expression left recorded human musical performances inadequately protected, which facilitated piracy. Applying these lessons, this Article contends that generative AI training implicates copyright law in ways not dissimilar to …

Diamonds Are Forever, As Are Trademarks: Articulating The Twists Of Section 43(A) Trade Dress Protection For Jewelry Designs Through The Facts Of David Yurman V. Mejuri, Daphne Singer

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

Introduction: 

Jewelry is adornment--adornment that has “spawned cultural movements, launched political dynasties, and even started wars.”This Article will analyze the application of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act,which covers trade dress, to jewelry design. Trade dress law is a powerful tool for designers because it regulates the protection of designs rather than words.Despite this strength, trade dress has not been analyzed in the context of the jewelry industry because legal academics have dismissed jewelry as an accessory to fashion law. Luxury jewelry and watches are often used to convey status via “recognizable, distinguished designs that consumers associate with the particular …

How Should The Law Treat Future Ai Systems? Fictional Legal Personhood Versus Legal Identity, Heather Alexander, Jonathan Simon, Frédéric Pinard

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

The law draws a sharp distinction between objects and persons, and between two kinds of persons, the ''fictional'' kind (i.e. corporations), and the ''non-fictional'' kind (individual or ''natural'' persons). This paper will assess whether we maximize overall long-term legal coherence by (A) maintaining an object classification for all future AI systems, (B) creating fictional legal persons associated with suitably advanced, individuated AI systems (giving these fictional legal persons derogable rights and duties associated with certified groups of existing persons, potentially including free speech, contract rights, and standing to sue ''on behalf of'' the AI system), or (C) recognizing non-fictional legal …

Evolving Threats, Evolving Duties: Ransomware, Artificial Intelligence, And Cybersecurity Law, Chase Hayes

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This paper examines the evolving legal obligations of corporations and public institutions in the face of ransomware, cyber threats, and artificial intelligence, asserting that a proactive legal framework is essential to mitigate or altogether avoid liability, protect stakeholders, and ensure national security. As cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated, laws and regulations struggle to keep up. Generative artificial intelligence only deepens this disruption and with technology continuously evolving, it is difficult to imagine what the cyberspace will look like in years to come. This article responds to the gap by emphasizing the need for integration between the legal profession and cybersecurity expertise. …

Investigation Expenses, Ryan Vacca

Faculty Publications

Misappropriating trade secrets is usually done in secret. After all, those taking another’s trade secret in violation of state and federal law rarely openly tout their misdeeds. As a result, trade secret owners do not always immediately realize that their trade secret has been misappropriated and must spend significant resources investigating whether misappropriation has occurred and, if so, by whom and to what extent.

An important question frequently arising over the last several years but overlooked in the scholarly literature is whether a trade secret owner’s investigation expenses are recoverable as “actual loss” under state and federal trade secret laws. …

Campbell At 30: A Retrospective Appreciation, Michael W. Carroll, Peter Jaszi

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article traces the intellectual history of copyright law’s fair use doctrine at the Supreme Court from its first encounter with fair use to its landmark decision slightly more than three decades ago in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. Campbell provided courts with a coherent, user-centered theory for applying the four statutory fair use factors provided under 17 U.S.C. § 107, a standard the Court recently ratified in Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc. and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith. As one of three related articles, this Article advances two principal claims to contribute to …

The Paradox Of Intellectual Property At The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court is dramatically more politically polarized in the Roberts Court era, and the justices have been criticized for highly ideological and partisan decision-making. Yet, we show that there is one area of law that is becoming less ideologically divided and predictable: intellectual property (IP). In an earlier study, we showed that, prior to the Roberts Court, IP case outcomes were predictable based on judicial ideology, with more conservative justices embracing IP rights, as they do for real property. In the last two decades, IP has become more influential on the economy and society, through the increasing dominance of …

Ip @ The U - January 2026, Jorge L. Contreras, Jonas Anderson

Law School Historical Documents

Welcome to IP @ the U, a periodic newsletter for students, alumni, faculty and friends of the University of Utah College of Law's Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. This issue covers highlights from Fall 2025 and early Spring 2026.

From Player Piano To Generative Ai: Artificial Expression And The Law Of Copyright, Douglas Lind, Adrienne Holz

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

American copyright law has experienced challenges and sometimes faltered when confronting mechanical reproduction. This Article retraces the rise and diffusion of the player piano and the phonograph, examining how they reshaped the making and listening to music. As these technologies spread throughout American society more rapidly than copyright law could adjust, courts misclassified piano rolls and records as merely mechanics. Reducing these new fixations to machinery rather than embodiments of human expression left recorded human musical performances inadequately protected, which facilitated piracy. Applying these lessons, this Article contends that generative AI training implicates copyright law in ways not dissimilar to …

Developer Perspectives On Licensing And Copyright Issues Arising From Generative Ai For Software Development, Trevor Stalnaker, Nathan Wintersgill, Oscar Chaparro, Laura A. Heymann, Massimiliano Di Penta, Daniel M. German, Denys Poshyvanyk

Faculty Publications

Despite the utility that Generative AI (GenAI) tools provide for tasks such as writing code, the use of these tools raises important legal questions and potential risks, particularly those associated with copyright law. As lawmakers and regulators respond to these questions, the views of users can offer relevant perspectives. In this article, we provide: (1) a survey of 574 developers on the licensing and copyright aspects of GenAI for coding, as well as follow-up interviews; (2) a snapshot of developers’ views at a time when GenAI and perceptions of it were rapidly evolving; and (3) an analysis of developers’ perspectives, …

Ai Co-Inventor: Robot Enabled Patent Prosecution, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

De Minimis Confusion, Maximum Risk: Consumer Vulnerability And Trademark Law In Lerner & Rowe V. Brown Engstrand, Gabriella Johnson

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Fair Use In The Supreme Court: A Peek Behind The Scenes, Jonathan Band

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Between 1975 and 1994, the Supreme Court considered five cases that involved fair use: Williams & Wilkins v. United States; Sony v. Universal City Studios; Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises; Stewart v. Abend; and Campbell v. Acuff-Rose. The papers of the Supreme Court Justices that decided these cases show the Court as a profoundly human institution with the Justices often struggling to fashion opinions that could gain the support of a majority. The Justices clearly cared about the copyright merits, but they were also willing to compromise to achieve a certain result. In several …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

Suing The Ghost In The Medical Machine, Jason R. Cheek

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Devices that autonomously diagnose medical conditions, with no human interaction, have arrived. These self-operating systems incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), and include machines that diagnose preventable blindness, as well as some that write radiology reports. These devices feature AI-integrated software to make diagnosis decisions traditionally made by humans who have received extensive medical training. Soon, AI-driven devices will autonomously make treatment decisions.

What happens when these autonomous medical systems harm a patient? At the moment, most would expect product liability law to provide a path to recovery. But AI oftentimes uses multiple complex inputs and approaches, including statistical probabilities, to reach …

The Apathy Economy: Patents, Advertising, And Consumer Indifference, Gavin Milczarek-Desai, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Patents function as signals as well as rights to exclude. They inform competitors, investors, employees, and consumers about the invention and its owner. How this information affects consumers is not well understood. Existing studies disagree about how advertising a product or service as patented, or patent pending, affects the price consumers will pay. This Article offers the first major empirical study of that question and finds that consumers behave with surprising rationality: they will not pay any price premium for a patented product. A product’s patent status conveys little information about whether it is superior to competing offerings. The results …

Copyright Disincentives, Thomas D. Haley

UF Law Faculty Publications

Over the last decade, a spate of high-profile copyright infringement lawsuits rattled the music industry. Controversy followed in the wake of multi-million-dollar damages awards, with criticism emanating from courts, scholars, and musicians alike. The basic logic of the critique is sound: the specter of such massive liability for small and inadvertent similarities disincentivizes the creation of new music. But the disincentive effect remains curiously under-theorized. This Article develops the literature’s first nuanced account of this disincentive theory, drawing on analysis of hundreds of copyright dockets as well as interviews with musicians to show that the feared disincentive has not come …

Crypto Money Laundering, Jiaying Jiang

UF Law Faculty Publications

The crypto ecosystem has become a new frontier for money laundering, with criminals exploiting its anonymous and pseudonymous features. This Article explores how money laundering operates in the crypto space and highlights emerging trends. It then examines the existing legal and regulatory framework and argues that its core weakness lies in its reliance on trusted intermediaries. This approach conflicts with the philosophy that shaped the emergence of the crypto industry-one grounded in disintermediation and decentralized trust. To address this tension, this Article demystifies decentralization, showing that it is not a binary condition but instead exists on a spectrum. Across the …

Fading Prestige: A Comparative Analysis Of Trademark Dilution's Impact On Luxury Fashion Brands In The United States And European Union, Pravalika Surakanti

IP Theory

The paper focuses on the concept of trademark dilution in relation to luxury fashion brands in international markets. Focusing on the United States and the European Union, it will look at the different approaches these regions take and how certain holdups in dilution law affect fashion companies’ global brand protection strategies. The paper looks at the application of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, the EU Trademark Directive, and other essential laws to their respective jurisdictions’ cases to determine the trends of trademark dilution claims. It is found that both regions provide luxury fashion houses with substantial protection; however, the European …

Beyond Hipaa: The Ftc’S Expanding Role In Digital Health Privacy Enforcement, Sandhya Srinivasa

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Consumer digital health platforms have become an increasingly prominent feature of modern health care, collecting and storing sensitive health information directly from users. Yet most of these applications operate outside the scope of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), creating a significant regulatory gap in the protection of personal health data. This case note examines how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has stepped into that gap by leveraging Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) to police privacy and data security practices among non-HIPAA-covered digital health platforms. Focusing on three landmark enforcement …

Patenting Ai Discoveries In Life Sciences: Overcoming Eligibility, Disclosure, And Inventorship Challenges, Dhohyung Kim, Ryan P. Hiler

IP Theory

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries face transformative opportunities through artificial intelligence and machine learning integration. However, these technological advances create distinct patent law complications that traditional drug development does not encounter. This article analyzes three interconnected obstacles: establishing eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, meeting disclosure standards under § 112(a), and determining proper inventorship when AI systems contribute substantially to claimed inventions. Drawing from recent USPTO guidance and Federal Circuit precedent, this analysis offers evidence-based strategies for patent practitioners, research scientists, and business leaders seeking robust intellectual property protection for AI-integrated pharmaceutical innovations.

Ai Can't Adlib: Theorizing An Improvisation Carveout In The Work For Hire Doctrine, Audrey Pope

IP Theory

AI-generated actors and digital replicas are an increasingly pressing concern in the filmmaking industry. While this technology is only one of the myriad ways that generative AI is set to change Hollywood, debates about its use reflect a throughline in debates about AI generally: Can this technology do a convincing, much less desirable, job of what humans have done before? This Article argues that, at least in one particular context, the answer is no. It focuses on the art of adlibbing. It explains the unique position of improvisation within copyright law and proposes one mechanism—a carveout in the work for …

Recentering Creativity In Copyright Law Discourse, Joshua Yuvaraj

IP Theory

Copyright discourse often centers around creativity; as a rationale for copyright, and as a threshold for copyright to subsist in songs, books, art and other creative works. Yet creativity remains an ethereal concept: if we do not know what it means, we cannot evaluate whether copyright law is promoting it, nor can we properly understand what it means for a work to be "creative" where that is required for copyright to subsist. An emerging strand of copyright discourse seeks to respond by examining scientific insights into the cognitive process of creativity to highlight how copyright law should be reshaped to …