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Full-Text Articles in Law
Free Trade In Patented Goods: International Exhaustion For Patents, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec
Free Trade In Patented Goods: International Exhaustion For Patents, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec
Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec
Modern international trade law seeks to increase global welfare by lowering barriers to trade and encouraging international competition. This “free trade” approach, while originally applied to reduce tariffs on trade, has been extended to challenge non-tariff barriers, with modern trade agreements targeting telecommunication regulations, industrial and product safety standards, and intellectual property rules. Patent law, however, remains inconsistent with free-trade principles by allowing patent holders to subdivide the world market along national borders and to forbid trade in patented goods from one nation to another. This Article demonstrates that the doctrines thwarting free trade in patented goods are protectionist remnants …
The Jekyll And Hyde Story Of International Trade: The Supreme Court In Phrma V. Walsh And The Trips Agreement, Srividhya Ragavan
The Jekyll And Hyde Story Of International Trade: The Supreme Court In Phrma V. Walsh And The Trips Agreement, Srividhya Ragavan
Srividhya Ragavan
No abstract provided.
Spillovers Theory And Its Conceptual Boundaries, Brett Frischmann
Spillovers Theory And Its Conceptual Boundaries, Brett Frischmann
Brett Frischmann
No abstract provided.
Tailoring Legal Protection For Computer Software, Peter S. Menell
Tailoring Legal Protection For Computer Software, Peter S. Menell
Peter Menell
No abstract provided.
Private Value Determinations And The Potential Effect On The Future Of Research And Development, Amy L. Landers
Private Value Determinations And The Potential Effect On The Future Of Research And Development, Amy L. Landers
Amy L. Landers
Although the promise of an emerging patent market is thought to provide future benefits to invention, innovation, and the public, this essay examines the possibility that the aggregate influence of this activity could instead destabilize patent values in a manner that mirrors the "bubble" phenomenon that occurred in certain markets in the past. To the extent that this occurs, this would destabilize the patent system and might have negative consequences for the future of investment in research, development and innovation.
A Positive Externalities Approach To Copyright Law: Theory And Application, Jeffrey L. Harrison
A Positive Externalities Approach To Copyright Law: Theory And Application, Jeffrey L. Harrison
Jeffrey L Harrison
The basic goal of copyright law is, at a general level, fairly well understood, yet the law itself seems untethered to any consistent analytical approach designed to achieve that goal. This Article has two goals. The first is to explain in some detail what copyright law might look like if it reflected economic reasoning. The second is to put to the test the question of whether copyright law is as far out of sync with economic guidelines as White-Smith Music and Eldred suggest. In order to understand the economic approach and the inconsistency of copyright law, as well as the …
Deconstructing And Reconstructing Hot News: Toward A Functional Approach, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Robyn Shelton
Deconstructing And Reconstructing Hot News: Toward A Functional Approach, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Robyn Shelton
Jeffrey L Harrison
Hot news is factual, time-sensitive information ranging from baseball scores to the outbreak of war. In recent years, hot news has found its own niche among legal scholars and courts. When deconstructed, though, hot news is simply information and, like most information, it has a public good character. The problem ultimately is that news is non-excludable and non-rivalrous – discoverers or creators of hot news cannot exclude others from using the news and hot news is not destroyed when used. This means it may be produced at levels that are less than optimal.The critical element in hot news is lead …
Intellectual Property As A Law Of Organization, Jonathan M. Barnett
Intellectual Property As A Law Of Organization, Jonathan M. Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
The incentive thesis for patents is challenged by the existence of alternative means by which firms can capture returns on innovation. Taking into account patent alternatives yields a robust reformulation of the incentive thesis as mediated by organizational form. Patents enable innovators to make efficient selections of firm scope by transacting with least-cost suppliers of commercialization inputs. These expanded transactional opportunities reduce the minimum size of the market into which any innovator—or the supplier of any other technological or production input—can attempt entry. Disaggregation of the innovation and commercialization process then induces the formation of secondary markets in disembodied technology …
Property As Process: How Innovation Markets Select Innovation Regimes, Jonathan M. Barnett
Property As Process: How Innovation Markets Select Innovation Regimes, Jonathan M. Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
It is commonly asserted that innovation markets suffer from excessive intellectualproperty protections, which in turn stifle output. But empirical inquiries can neither confirm nor deny this assertion. Under the “agnostic” assumption that we cannot assess directly whether intellectual-property coverage is excessive, an alternative query is proposed: can the market assess if any “propertization outcome” is excessive and then undertake actions to yield a socially preferable outcome? Grounded in the “bottom up” methodology of new institutional economics, this process-based approach takes the view that innovator populations make rent-seeking investments that continuously “select” among a range of “innovation regimes” that trade off …
An Alternative Approach To Channeling?, Mark P. Mckenna
An Alternative Approach To Channeling?, Mark P. Mckenna
Mark P. McKenna
Intellectual property law has developed a variety of doctrines to police the boundaries between various forms of protection. Courts and scholars alike overwhelmingly conceive of these doctrines in terms of the nature of the objects of protection. The functionality doctrine in trademark law, for example, defines the boundary between trademark and patent law by identifying and refusing trademark protection to features that play a functional role in a product's performance. Likewise, the useful article doctrine works at the boundary of copyright and patent law to identify elements of an article's design that are dictated by function and to channel protection …
Intellectual Property Defenses, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
Intellectual Property Defenses, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
Alex Stein
This Article demonstrates that all intellectual property defenses fit into three conceptual categories: general, individualized, and class defenses. A general defense challenges the validity of the plaintiff’s intellectual property right. When raised successfully, it annuls the plaintiff’s right and relieves not only the defendant, but also the entire world of the duty to comply with it. An individualized defense is much narrower in scope: Its successful showing defeats the specific infringement claim asserted by the plaintiff, but leaves the plaintiff’s right intact. Class defenses form an in-between category: They create an immunity zone for a certain group of users to …
Toward An Ecology Of Intellectual Property: Lessons From Environmental Economics For Valuing Copyright's Commons, Frank Pasquale
Toward An Ecology Of Intellectual Property: Lessons From Environmental Economics For Valuing Copyright's Commons, Frank Pasquale
Frank A. Pasquale
The fair use defense in copyright law shields an intellectual commons of protected uses of copyrighted material from infringement actions. In determining whether a given use is fair, courts must assess the new use's potential effect on the market for the copyrighted work. Fair use jurisprudence too often fails to address the complementary, network, and long-range effects of new technologies on the market for copyrighted works. These effects parallel the indirect, direct, and option values of biodiversity recently recognized by environmental economists. Their sophisticated methods for valuing natural resources in tangible commons can inform legal efforts to address the intellectual …
Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale
Breaking The Vicious Circularity: Sony's Contribution To The Fair Use Doctrine, Frank Pasquale
Frank A. Pasquale
The fair use doctrine permits certain uses of copyrighted material that are unauthorized by the copyright holder. In 1984, the Supreme Court decided in Sony v. Universal Studios (Sony) that unauthorized home taping of television programs was a fair use of such programs. Decried by the dissent and frequently contested in ensuing cases, that decision sealed the majority's case that the videotape recorder was capable of substantial non-infringing uses and therefore legal. In the twenty years since Sony, the dissent's skepticism about the fairness of time-shifting has gotten about as warm a reception in appellate courts as the majority's position. …
Chapter 7 - Restricting Fair Use To Save The News, Ryan T. Holte
Chapter 7 - Restricting Fair Use To Save The News, Ryan T. Holte
Prof. Ryan T. Holte
Ryan T. Holte in “Restricting Fair Use to Save the News: A Proposed Change in Copyright Law to Bring More Profit to News Reporting” examines the present condition of the media and the economic and public policies behind protecting news. He further discusses current means of protecting information through copyright and misappropriation law, before proposing a change in the Copyright Act to better allow the news industry to reap profits from news reporting.
How Can Whelan V. Jaslow And Lotus V. Borland Both Be Right? Re-Examining The Economics Of Computer Software Reuse, Michael Risch
How Can Whelan V. Jaslow And Lotus V. Borland Both Be Right? Re-Examining The Economics Of Computer Software Reuse, Michael Risch
Michael Risch
The basic economic goal of copyright law is to balance an author's incentive to create with his or her ability to build on prior work in order to maximize social wealth. This balance is extremely important for computer software. On the one hand, software is often expensive to create and companies therefore need protection in order to recoup their investment. On the other hand, software is often expensive to create and companies can save costs by reusing pre-existing work. Quite often, the same companies that want to protect their software also want to use pre-existing work. As a result of …