Law Commons^™

Copy Game For High Score: The First Video Game Lawsuit, 20 J. Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2012), William K. Ford

William K. Ford

Commentators and industry historians generally agree that the multi-billion dollar video game industry began forty years ago in November 1972 with Atari's release of Pong. Pong is among the simplest of video games: a version of ping pong or tennis requiring little more to play than a ball, two paddles, a scoring indicator, and a couple of memorable sounds. While it was not the first video game, Pong was the first video game hit. With unauthorized copying of a successful product occurring, it is not surprising that a lawsuit resulted in the fall of 1973, one that predates the more …

Games Are Not Coffee Mugs: Games And The Right Of Publicity, 29 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. L.J. 1 (2012), William K. Ford, Raizel Liebler

William K. Ford

Are games more like coffee mugs, posters, and T-shirts, or are they more like books, magazines, and films? For purposes of the right of publicity, the answer matters. The critical question is whether games should be treated as merchandise or as expression. Three classic judicial decisions, decided in 1967, 1970, and 1973, held that the defendants needed permission to use the plaintiffs' names in their board games. These decisions judicially confirmed that games are merchandise, not something equivalent to more traditional media of expression. As merchandise, games are not like books; instead, they are akin to celebrity-embossed coffee mugs. To …

Three Strikes And You're Out: An Investigation Of Professional Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, H. Ward Classen

Akron Law Review

This Article will examine the economic structure of the professional sports industry, explore professional baseball's judicially created exemption from antitrust laws and discuss the impact of the Federal Baseball Club v. National League and subsequent decisions on the professional sports industry. Finally, this Article will demonstrate that while baseball's antitrust exemption may have been justified sixty-five years ago, it now promotes economic inefficiency and infringes upon the constitutional rights of professional baseball players to freely market their talents.

Film Artists Bushwhacked By The Coloroids: One-Hundredth Congress To The Rescue?, Nicholas Swyrydenko

Akron Law Review

The late, great film director, John Huston, in a videotaped speech prepared specially before his death for presentation at a Senate hearing on the issue of the colorization of black and white films, raged that he and other film artists, who had worked to produce such classic films as The Maltese Falcon, were being "bushwhacked by the coloroids," and he pleaded with Congress to step in to preserve that work.' This comment will trace the response of the One-Hundredth Congress to the pleas of John Huston and other film artists to preserve the original integrity of their films, and …

San Francisco Art & Athletics, Inc. V. United States Olympic Committee: Usoc May Enforce Its Rights In Olympic Without Proof Of Confusion, Charles F. Hauff Jr.

Akron Law Review

In San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Committee, the United States Supreme Court held that the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) could enforce its statutory rights in the mark OLYMPIC without proving likelihood of customer confusion. Because this holding extended the USOC's trademark rights beyond those engendered by the Lanham Act, the Court was compelled to subject those rights to constitutional scrutiny. The Court's holding prevented San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. (SFAA) from using the word OLYMPIC to promote the "Gay Olympic Games."

The SFAA decision will probably affect future analyses of trademark rights …

Punt, Impasse Or Kick: The 1987 Nflpa Antitrust Action, Elyzabeth Joy Holford

Akron Law Review

The business aspects of professional sport dominated the media when a twenty-seven day strike disrupted the 1987 NFL football season, which included the hiring of replacement players, the filing of numerous labor charges by both the NFL Management Council (NFLMC) and the NFL Players' Association (NFLPA) and the dismal end of the strike after many players crossed the picket lines to return to play.' On the day that the NFLPA announced that the strike was over, they also shifted into their final goal line defense: the filing of an antitrust action against the National Football League (NFL) and each individual …

Foul-Ball Injury At South Bend Game Highlights Delicate Safety Balance, Ed Edmonds

NDLS in the News

Baseball teams have operated under the assumption that anyone who attends a game accepts the risk of injury from foul balls or bats—an assumption that has been upheld by courts in many states including Indiana, under the "baseball rule."

The Lawyer Who Built Titletown: Gerald Clifford, The Green Bay Packers And Community Ownership, 14 U. Denv. Sports & Ent. L.J. 3 (2013), Maureen Collins

Maureen B. Collins

No abstract provided.

Training The Dragon®: The Use Of Voice Recognition Software In The Legal Writing Classroom, 48 The L. Tchr. 181 (2014), Maureen Collins

Maureen B. Collins

We are surrounded by technology – most of it designed to make our personal and professional lives easier. We have voice-assisted software at our fingertips. One conversation with Siri® and we know where to dine or who starred in our favorite movie. In the legal profession, technology is used not only to process words, but to conduct legal research, manage voluminous litigation documents, and track information on opposing counsel. Surely, then, there is a place for technology in the legal writing process.

Law, Literature, And The Legacy Of Virginia Woolf: Stories And Lessons In Feminist Legal Theory, 21 Tex. J. Women & L. 1 (2011), Susan Brody

Susan L. Brody

No abstract provided.

Twilight: The Unveiling Of Victims, Stalking, And Domestic Violence, 21 Cardozo J. L. & Gender 39 (2014), Susan L. Brody

Susan L. Brody

No abstract provided.

Critical Look At The So-Called Locker Room Mentality As A Means To Rationalize The Drug Testing Of Student Athletes, Walter Champion

Walter T Champion Jr.

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Internet Service Providers From Partners To Adversaries: Tracking Shifts In Interconnection Goals And Strategies In The Internet’S Fifth Generation, Rob Frieden

Rob Frieden

At the Internet’s inception, carriers providing the bit switching and transmission function largely embraced expanding connections and users as a primary service goal. These ventures refrained from metering traffic and charging for carriage based on the assumption that traffic volumes roughly matched, or that traffic measurement was not worth the bother in light of external funding from government grants. Most Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) bartered network access through a process known as peering in lieu of metering traffic and billing for network use. As governments removed subsidies and commercial carriers invested substantial funds to build larger and faster networks, identifying …

Copyright Infringement Of Musical Compositions: A Systematic Appproach, E. Scott Fruehwald

Akron Law Review

This article addresses the problems that courts face when dealing with copyright infringement of musical compositions. Infringement of music presents special problems for judges and juries because music is an intuitive art that is nonverbal and nonvisual. Consequently, traditional methods of establishing infringement are often unreliable when applied to music.

This paper will concentrate on the question of whether a composition that is similar to, but not the same as, another work infringes on the other work. I This inquiry is both qualitative and quantitative. First, one must establish that the first work employs material from the second work. Determining …

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Questions And A Few Suggestions On How The Fcc Can Lawfully Regulate Internet Access, Rob Frieden

Rob Frieden

This paper will examine the FCC’s March, 2015 Open Internet Order with an eye to assessing whether and how the Commission can successfully defend its decision in an appellate court. On two prior occasions, the FCC failed to convince a reviewing court that proposed regulatory safeguards do not unlawfully impose common carrier duties on private carriers. The Commission now has opted to reclassify broadband Internet access as common carriage, a decision sure to trigger a third court appeal. The FCC Open Internet Order offers several, possibly contradictory, justifications for its decision to apply Title II of the Communications Act, subject …

The Legacy Of Albert Spalding, The Holdouts Of Ty Cobb, Joe Dimaggio, And Sandy Koufax/Don Drysdale, And The 1994-95 Strike: Baseball's Labor Disputes Are As Linear As The Game, James R. Devine

Akron Law Review

While the individual stories of these holdouts are interesting in their own right, the import of their totality can only be seen in an historical context. The way in which major league baseball teams handled their holdouts was largely a reflection of the management style of Albert Spalding and William Hulbert, the founders of the National League. This management style continues through all three generations of these holdouts. Further, it extends into owner's dealings with the Major League Baseball Players' Association from its inception through the most recent strike. The holdouts, then, reflect a management style that has remained consistent …

Fictional Persona Test: Copyright Preemption In Human Audiovisual Characters, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Whether a producer's copyright in human audiovisual characters preempts the actors' rights of publicity claims is the focus of this Note. Part I outlines the framework of state right of publicity law and traces the development of case law involving such a right. Because "[a]dvertisers who want to run a particular advertisement nationally must comply with the law of all fifty states," this Note focuses on the right of publicity of the state with the broadest interpretation-the state of California. This Part shows that, under existing California right of publicity law, virtually anything evoking one's personal identity, including copyrighted materials, …

The Copyright Divide, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Most recently, the recording industry filed 261 lawsuits against individuals who illegally downloaded and distributed a large amount of music via peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, such as KaZaA, Grokster, iMesh, and Gnutella. Although the industry's recent approach was controversial and resulted in major criticisms from legislators, academics, civil libertarians, consumer advocates, and university officials, the copyright holders' aggressive tactics are not new.

In fact, copyright holders have been known for using, or encouraging their government to use, coercive power to protect their creative works. Only a decade ago, the U.S. copyright industries have lobbied their government to use strong-armed tactics to …

Digital Copyright And Confuzzling Rhetoric, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

The entertainment industry tells people they shouldn’t steal music because they wouldn’t steal a car, but has anybody ever downloaded a car? Music fans praise Napster and other file-sharing services for helping to free artists from the stranglehold of the music industry, but how many of these services actually have shared profits with songwriters and performing artists? Industry representatives claim that people use YouTube primarily to listen to or watch copyrighted contents, but are they missing a big piece of the user-generated content picture? Artists are encouraged to forget about copyright and hold live concerts instead, but can all artists …

The Graduated Response, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

In the past few years, the entertainment industry has deployed aggressive tactics toward individual end-users, online service providers, and other third parties. One of the latest proposals that the industry has been exploring is the so-called “graduated response” or “three strikes” system, which threatens to suspend the service of internet users after they have received two warnings from their ISPs about potentially illegal online file-sharing activities.

In December 2008, the RIAA made a formal public announcement of its change of focus toward greater cooperation with ISPs. This new collaborative effort seeks to replace the highly unpopular lawsuits the industry has …

The Escalating Copyright Wars, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Piracy is one of the biggest threats confronting the entertainment industry today. Every year, the industry is estimated to lose billions of dollars in revenue and faces the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. To protect itself against Internet pirates, the entertainment industry has launched the latest copyright war. So far, the industry has been winning. Among its trophies are the enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Vivendi Universal's defeat and purchase of MP3.com, the movie studios' victory in the DeCSS litigation, the bankruptcy and subsequent sale of Napster and its recent relaunch as a legitimate subscription-based …

The End Of An Era: The Mounting Challenges To The Ncaa’S Model Of Amateurism, John Niemeyer

Pepperdine Law Review

In the six years between 2006 and 2012, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a nonprofit organization made up of universities, doubled its net assets to its current, unprecedented level of over $566 million. In 2012 alone, the organization retained a $71 million surplus after it disbursed a majority of its revenue to the NCAA member universities. It was able to make this much money largely because of the television revenue earned from the highly popular and entertaining sports of men’s football and men’s basketball. One would think that if a nonprofit organization could retain $71 million at the end …

The Damage From Mega-Sporting Events In Brazil, J. Justin Woods

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Student Publications

Over the past several years, Brazil’s federal government and the city and state governments of Rio de Janeiro have invested tens of billions of dollars to develop the transportation, stadium, tourist, communications and security infrastructure required to host the 2007 Pan American Games, 2014 World Cup, and 2016 Summer Olympics. As Brazil seeks to use these mega- sporting events to assert itself as a major economic player on the word stage, its strategy demonstrates how hosting mega-events serves to attract regional and global capital, and to reinforce unequal power structures at the expense of the public treasury, environmental quality and …

An Unbalanced Act: A Criticism Of How The Court Of Arbitration For Sport Issues Unjustly Harsh Sanctions By Attempting To Regulate Doping In Sport, Melissa Hewitt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

To participate in international competitions, countries must submit to the doping rules set forth in the World Anti-Doping Code (the Code), a document brought into being by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Under the Agency's Code, athletes are required to commit to mandatory binding arbitration in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which gives them few chances for review of unjustly harsh sanctions. The CAS needs to re-examine its method of appealing doping cases because WADA's current strict liability scheme, coupled with the CAS's transnational jurisdiction, continually violates the rights of international athletes.

Pound For Pound: A Legal Analysis Of The Gambling, Alcohol, And Taxation Issues The Nfl Must Weigh As It Expands To London, Patrick Doughty

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fair Play For Those Who Need It Most: Athletic Opportunities For High School Student Athletes With Disabilities, Ian Forster

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Kicking Away Responsibility: Fifa's Role In Response To Migrant Worker Abuses In Qatar's 2022 World Cup, Azadeh Erfani

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Broken Bats And Broken Bones: Holding Stadium Owners Accountable For Alcohol-Fueled Fan-On-Fan Violence, Bridget Fitzpatrick

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

United States V. Barry Bonds V. Bronston: Can Section 1503 Handle The Truth?, Donald K. Kazee

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Preparing For Another Round Of Collective Bargaining In The National Basketball Association, Scott Bukstein

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.