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Intellectual Property Law

Selected Works

Tom W. Bell

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Copyrights, Privacy, And The Blockchain, Tom W. Bell Dec 2015

Copyrights, Privacy, And The Blockchain, Tom W. Bell

Tom W. Bell

The law of the United States forces authors to choose between copyrights and privacy rights. Federal lawmakers have noticed and tried to remedy that problem. The Copyright Act makes express provisions for anonymous and pseudonymous works. The Copyright Office has tried to remedy that tension, too; copyright registration forms do not outwardly require authors to reveal their real world identities. Nonetheless, authors still face a choice between protecting their privacy and enjoying one of copyright’s most powerful incentives: the prospect of transferring to another the exclusive right to use a copyrighted work. That power proves useful, to say the least, …

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Copyright Porn Trolls, Wasting Taxi Medallions, And The Propriety Of ‘Property’, Tom W. Bell Dec 2014

Copyright Porn Trolls, Wasting Taxi Medallions, And The Propriety Of ‘Property’, Tom W. Bell

Tom W. Bell

What happens when the government creates privileges that have powers rivaling those that the common law accords to property? Recent events in two seemingly unrelated areas suggest a troubling answer to that question. First, in copyright, porn trolls have sued thousands of John Does for allegedly participating in illegal file sharing. These suits evidently seek not judicial vindication but merely the defendants' identities, which the plaintiffs then use to reap settlement payments from guilty and innocent alike. Second, taxi drivers in cities across the world have launched legal, political, and physical attacks against Uber and other networked transportation services, accusing …

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Virtual Trade Dress: A Very Real Problem, Tom Bell Dec 1996

Virtual Trade Dress: A Very Real Problem, Tom Bell

Tom W. Bell

A tragedy looms for trade dress. Encouraged by bad case law and tempted by new technologies, trade dress threatens to assume a role properly reserved for other forms of intellectual property. Trade dress should aim primarily at protecting the public from confusing the features that identify goods and services. Current trends, however, risk expanding trade dress until it constitutes the very commodities that it once merely identified. Superficially genuine but fundamentally artificial, this is virtual trade dress.

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