Law Commons^™

National Cybersecurity Innovation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

West Virginia Law Review

National cybersecurity plays a crucial role in protecting our critical infrastructure, such as telecommunication networks, the electricity grid, and even financial transactions. Most discussions about promoting national cybersecurity focus on governance structures, international relations, and political science. In contrast, this Article proposes a different agenda and one that promotes the use of innovation mechanisms for technological advancement. By promoting inducements for technological developments, such innovation mechanisms encourage the advancement of national cybersecurity solutions. In exploring possible solutions, this Article asks whether the government or markets can provide national cybersecurity innovation. This inquiry is a fragment of a much larger literature …

Abandoning Copyright, Dave Fagundes, Aaron Perzanowski

William & Mary Law Review

For nearly two hundred years, U.S. copyright law has assumed that owners may voluntarily abandon their rights in a work. But scholars have largely ignored copyright abandonment, and case law on the subject is fragmented and inconsistent. As a result, abandonment remains poorly theorized, owners can avail themselves of no reliable mechanism to abandon their works, and the practice remains rare. This Article seeks to bring copyright abandonment out of the shadows, showing that it is a doctrine rich in conceptual, normative, and practical significance. Unlike abandonment of real and chattel property, which imposes significant public costs in exchange for …

Afghanistan Legislative Commitments To The Wto: A Deeper Look At Afghanistan's Compliance With Trips, Hafizullah Seddiqi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In 2016, Afghanistan formally acceded to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to improve its worldwide trading prospects. However, this journey began much earlier. To join the WTO, one of Afghanistan's commitments was to reform its then-existing trademark laws. Intellectual property (IP)-related laws are, in general, one of the fields that countries must reform prior to joining the WTO, so as to be in accordance with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While Afghanistan has enacted some IPrelated statutes, including the 2009 Law on Trade Marks Registration, it continues to fall short of conforming to TRIPS because …

Measuring Trademark Dilution By Tarnishment, Suneal Bedi, David Reibstein

Indiana Law Journal

The law of trademark tarnishment—a type of trademark dilution—is in disarray. The

basic definition is deceptively simple. Trademark tarnishment occurs when a junior

mark harms the reputation of a substantially similar existing senior trademark by

associating itself with something perverse or deviant. However, it turns out that

Congress and the courts disagree over the prima facie evidence necessary to prove

its existence. The problem is that federal law and related legal principles are simply

ill-equipped to adequately analyze this unique market-driven doctrine. To make

matters worse, legal scholars cannot even agree on whether trademark tarnishment

can empirically exist in the …

Third-Party Interests And The Property Law Misfit In Patent Law, Sarah Rajec

Faculty Publications

Courts and scholars have long parsed the characteristics of patent grants and likened them, alternately, to real or personal property law, monopolies, public franchises and other regulatory grants, or a hybrid of these. The characterizations matter, because they can determine how patents are treated for the purposes of administrative review, limitations, and remedies, inter alia. And these varied treatments in turn affect incentives to innovate. Patents are often likened to real property in an effort to maximize rights and allow inventors to internalize all of the benefits from their activities. And courts often turn first to real property analogies when …

Copyright Registration: Why The U.S. Should Berne The Registration Requirement, David R. Carducci

Georgia State University Law Review

The following note discusses the registration requirement under the Copyright Act and its interplay with the Berne Convention’s prohibition of formalities. Part I explains the recent division between the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals and provides an in-depth analysis of the application and registration approaches. Part II details the Supreme Court’s adoption of the registration approach in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC. Part III gives a brief history of the Berne Convention and examines registration under Berne as a nonessential formality. Finally, Part IV offers a proposed long-term solution to amend the Copyright Act by making …

Pengembangan Kapasitas Usaha Kecil Menengah Dalam Memanfaatkan Sistem Hak Kekayaan Intelektual Bagi Peningkatan Daya Saing Usaha, Ranggalawe Suryasaladin

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

As a main contributor to Indonesia GDP, Small and Medium Enterprises should be assisted by Goverment and University in order to expand its capacity in managing their intangible assets and intellectual property. The efforts in giving guidance to SMEs in managing its IP and take a benefit of IP systems could be on the mapping of problems faced by SMEs in managing its IP and addressing a better policy recommendation suitable to solves it problems. This article streghtening the arguments that to enhance Indonesia SME capacities in managing its IP , the government institutions and university have to coopertate in …

Guest Post Out Of The Blue The Federal Circuit Devises A New Rule For Color Mark, Christine Farley

Editorial Contributions

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held that color marks on product packaging can be inherently distinctive. On April 8, 2020, the court issued its opinion in In re: Forney Industries, Inc. It stated that “a distinct color-based product packaging mark can indicate the source of the goods to a consumer, and, therefore, can be inherently distinctive.”URL: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2020/04/federal-circuit-devises.html

University Inventions Reconsidered: Debunking The Myth Of University Ownership, Patricia E. Campbell

William & Mary Business Law Review

Most universities today assert ownership rights over all patentable inventions (and many other types of intellectual property) created by members of the university community, including faculty, staff, students, visitors, and others. Universities then attempt to license that intellectual property (IP) to third parties, in order to generate revenue for the university and to give the public the benefit of innovations developed by the institution, often with the use of federal funds. This Article provides an evaluation of the technology transfer policies and practices of U.S. universities. Part I surveys the IP policies of a representative group of universities, showing that …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Google V. Oracle Amicus Merits Stage Brief: Vindicating Ip’S Channeling Principle And Restoring Jurisdictional Balance To Software Copyright Protection, Peter Menell, David Nimmer, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Circuit’s decisions in Oracle v. Google conflict with this Court’s seminal decision in Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), misinterpret Congress’s codification of this Court’s fundamental channeling principle and related limiting doctrines, and upend nearly three decades of sound, well-settled, and critically important decisions of multiple regional circuits on the scope of copyright protection for computer software. Based on the fundamental channeling principle enunciated in Baker v. Selden, as reflected in § 102(b) of the Copyright Act, the functional requirements of APIs for computer systems and devices, like the internal workings of other machines, are …

Wipo Conversation On Intellectual Property (Ip) And Artificial Intelligence (Ai), Sean Flynn

Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Right On Time: A Reply To Professors Allen, Claeys, Epstein, Gordon, Holbrook, Mossoff, Rose, And Van Houweling, Dotan Oliar, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

A simple observation started us off in writing Right on Time. Studying and teaching intellectual property law, we noticed striking parallels between traditional first possession rules in property law and analagous rules governing the acquisition of patent, copyright, and trademark rights. We thought that established first possession principles could illuminate the workings of IP law. As we dug in, however, it became increasingly clear that our premise wasn’t quite right. While many penetrating commentators had said many penetrating things about first possession, the leading treatments tended to focus on significant individual aspects of the overall issue. What we could …

A Serendipitous Experiment In Percolation Of Intellectual Property Doctrine, Daniel R. Cahoy, Lynda J. Oswald

Indiana Law Journal

This Article fills a gap in the literature by providing novel and unique empirical evidence of the impact of percolated intellectual property doctrine versus the impact of isolated doctrine from a specialized court. It relies on the U.S. Supreme Court’s paired decisions in 2014 in Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc.15 and Highmark, Inc. v. Allcare Health Management Systems, Inc.16 to highlight a natural forum for evaluating the effects of percolation on federal legal doctrine. At issue in those cases was the fee-shifting language of Section 285 of the Patent Act: “The court in exceptional cases may …

The Harmonization Myth In International Intellectual Property Law, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

There is a dominant narrative in international intellectual property ("IP") law of ever-increasing harmonization. This narrative has been deployed in ways descriptive, prescriptive, and instrumental: approximating the historical trend, providing justification, and establishing the path forward. Appeals to harmonization are attractive. They evoke a worldwide partnership and shared sacrifice to meet the goals of innovation and access to technology through certainty, efficiency, and increased competition through lowered trade barriers. Countries with strong IP protections consistently and successfully tout the importance of certainty and lower trade barriers when seeking new and stronger protections from countries with lower levels of protection. Yet …

Unregistered Complaints, Christine Galbraith Davik

Faculty Publications

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its highly-anticipated decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, LLC which resolved a split among U.S. Court of Appeals concerning the point in time when a copyright owner is first able to file suit against an alleged infringer. While at first glance this case may merely appear to be a simple issue of statutory interpretation, namely whether it is upon application for registration or once a determination has been made on registration by the U.S. Copyright Office, I argue this decision is a clarion call for a much-needed amendment to …

Introduction: What Is Real? Authenticity, Transparency, And Trust In The Digital Age Of Fashion, Joseph M. Forgione

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Patently Risky: Framing, Innovation And Entrepreneurial Preferences, Elizabeth Hoffman, David L. Schwartz, Matthew L. Spitzer, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

An emerging common wisdom holds that courts have made it “too hard” to obtain patent protection in critical industries. The origin of this criticism dates back at least as far as the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 landmark opinion in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. which (the argument goes) triggered a chain reaction of judicial opinions rendering patent rights progressively more difficult to secure. Two years later, the Supreme Court decided Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, another opinion widely viewed as restricting patent rights. And, barely three years after Mayo, the Federal Circuit cited it in …

Copyright & Fashion: The Shoe That Does Not Fit, Cassandra Baloga

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.