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Testing Modern Trademark Law's Theory Of Harm, Mark Mckenna
Testing Modern Trademark Law's Theory Of Harm, Mark Mckenna
Mark P. McKenna
Modern scholarship takes a decidedly negative view of trademark law. Commentators rail against doctrinal innovations like dilution and initial interest confusion. They clamor for clearer and broader defenses. And they plead for greater First Amendment scrutiny of various applications of trademark law. But beneath all of this criticism lies overwhelming agreement that consumer confusion is harmful. This easy acceptance of the harmfulness of confusion is a problem because it operates at too high a level of generality, ignoring important differences between types of relationships about which consumers might be confused. Failure to differentiate between these different relationships has enabled trademark …
Teaching Trademark Theory Through The Lens Of Distinctiveness, Mark P. Mckenna
Teaching Trademark Theory Through The Lens Of Distinctiveness, Mark P. Mckenna
Mark P. McKenna
This contribution to the annual teaching edition of the Saint Louis University Law Journal encourages teachers to begin trademark law courses using the concept of distinctiveness as a vehicle for articulating producer and consumer perspectives in trademark law. Viewing the law through these sometimes different perspectives helps in approaching a variety of doctrines in trademark law, and both perspectives are relatively easy to grasp in the context of distinctiveness.
The Right Of Publicity And Autonomous Self-Definition, Mark P. Mckenna
The Right Of Publicity And Autonomous Self-Definition, Mark P. Mckenna
Mark P. McKenna
Legal protection against unauthorized commercial uses of an individual's identity has grown significantly over the last fifty years as it has relentlessly pursued economic value. It was forced to focus on value because a false distinction between the harms suffered by private citizens and celebrities seemingly left celebrities without a privacy claim for commercial use of their identities. But the normative case for awarding individuals the economic value of their identity is weak, since celebrities do not need additional incentive to invest in either their native skill or in developing a persona. Still, while the prevailing justification is inadequate, as …
The Origins Of American Design Patent Protection, Jason John Du Mont, Mark D. Janis
The Origins Of American Design Patent Protection, Jason John Du Mont, Mark D. Janis
Jason John Du Mont
Many firms invest heavily in the way their products look, and they rely on a handful of intellectual property regimes to stop rivals from producing look-alikes. Two of these regimes—copyright and trademark—have been closely scrutinized in intellectual property scholarship. A third, the design patent, remains little understood except among specialists. In particular, there has been virtually no analysis of the design patent system’s core assumption: that the rules governing patents for inventions should be incorporated en masse for designs. One reason why the design patent system has remained largely unexplored in the literature is that scholars have never explained how …
Why Copyright Law Lacks Taste And Scents, Leon R. Calleja
Why Copyright Law Lacks Taste And Scents, Leon R. Calleja
Leon R Calleja
This paper explores the resistance in U.S. copyright law to extend copyright protection to scents and tastes, and advances the position that copyright law’s originality and expression requirements limit copyrightable subject matter to expressions that engage both author and audience in a way that requires reflection upon the work—or at least, the capacity for reflection—in a necessarily intersubjective and communicative fashion, what I call a “public dimension.” That the sensations of taste and smell are inescapably immediate and private suggest that they lack the kind of public dimension that visual and audio works exhibit. Indeed, this creates an ineffability characterized …