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Full-Text Articles in Law

Private Standards In Public Law: Copyright, Lawmaking And The Case Of Accounting, Lawrence A. Cunningham Nov 2005

Private Standards In Public Law: Copyright, Lawmaking And The Case Of Accounting, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Michigan Law Review

Government increasingly leverages its regulatory function by embodying in law standards that are promulgated and copyrighted by nongovernmental organizations. Departures from such standards expose citizens to criminal, civil, and administrative sanctions, yet private actors generate, control, and limit access to them. Despite governmental ambitions, no one is responsible for evaluating the legitimacy of this approach ex ante and no framework exists to facilitate analysis. This Article contributes an analytical framework and proposes institutional mechanisms to implement it. The lack of a comprehensive framework for evaluating copyright to standards embodied in law is surprising because the range of standards potentially affected …


The Changing Meaning Of Patent Claim Terms, Mark A. Lemley Oct 2005

The Changing Meaning Of Patent Claim Terms, Mark A. Lemley

Michigan Law Review

The claims of a patent are central to virtually every aspect of patent law. The claims define the scope of the invention, and their meaning therefore determines both whether a defendant's product infringes a patent and whether the patent is valid. One of the most significant aspects of patent litigation is "claim construction," the process of defining the words of the claim in other, theoretically clearer words. Courts construe the claims of the patent by starting with the plain meaning of their terms as they would be understood by a person having ordinary skill in the art, or PHOSITA. Claim …


Search And Persuasion In Trademark Law, Barton Beebe Aug 2005

Search And Persuasion In Trademark Law, Barton Beebe

Michigan Law Review

The consumer, we are led to believe, is the measure of all things in trademark law. Trademarks exist only to the extent that consumers perceive them as designations of source. Infringement occurs only to the extent that consumers perceive one trademark as referring to the source of another. The most "intellectual" of the intellectual properties, trademarks are a property purely of consumers' minds. The simple idealist ontology underlying trademark law is largely responsible for the law's characteristic instability. Since 1992, the Supreme Court has considered - and in some cases, reconsidered - seven trademark cases. The Court's copyright cases garner …


Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick Jan 2005

Planting A Standard: Proposing A Broad Reading Of In Re Elsner, Alicia L. Frostick

Michigan Law Review

This Note will show that one can read Elsner broadly to encompass both plant-type and widget-type inventions, and that applying Elsner to both plants and widgets is within the current statutory framework and case law. Such a reading would change the § 102 bar for inventions patentable under § 10i29 (hereinafter referred to as "widgets") as well as for plants. Part I of this Note argues that congressional sources require a flexible test-one that does not prejudice any objects under the Patent Act. Part II discusses the judicial interpretation of the Patent Act prior to Elsner in order to argue …