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Trademark Law And Status Signaling: Tattoos For The Privileged, Jeffrey L. Harrison
Trademark Law And Status Signaling: Tattoos For The Privileged, Jeffrey L. Harrison
UF Law Faculty Publications
The motivations for buying a good or service are highly complex. At the most basic level, people buy goods because of what the goods do or because of the aesthetic elements they embody. More technically, buyers derive utility from the "functional" quality of these goods. Another motivation relates to what the goods "say" about the buyer. Here, the good is a signaling device. Signaling is not new, of course, and can indicate anything from social class to political leanings.
This Essay addresses the issue of whether it should be public policy to subsidize this type of person-to-person status signaling. This …
Why The Customer Isn’T Always Right: Producer-Based Limits On Rights Accretion In Trademark, Rebecca Tushnet
Why The Customer Isn’T Always Right: Producer-Based Limits On Rights Accretion In Trademark, Rebecca Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this article the author responds to James Gibson’s article Risk Aversion and Rights Accretion in Intellectual Property Law, which offers valuable insights into the extra-judicial dynamics that have contributed to the seemingly unending expansion of copyright and trademark rights over the past few decades. Her response focuses on the trademark side of that expansion. The theoretical basis for granting trademark rights is that, if consumers perceive that a mark or other symbol indicates that a single source is responsible for a product or service—whether through physical production, licensing, sponsorship, or other approval—then the law should give effect to …