Law Commons^™

Plain Packaging And The Interpretation Of The Trips Agreement, Daniel J. Gervais, Susy Frankel

Daniel J Gervais

Plain packaging of cigarettes as a way of reducing tobacco consumption and its related health costs and effects raises a number of international trade law issues. The plain packaging measures adopted in Australia impose strict format requirements on word trademarks (such as Marlboro or Camel) and ban the use of figurative marks (colors, logos, etc.). As a result, questions have been raised as to plain packaging’s compatibility with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). WTO members can validly take measures to protect and promote public health, but in doing so they …

Extraterritoriality Of State Trade Secret Law, Kwangho Jang

Kwangho Jang

According to recent surveys, businesses prefer trade secret protection to patent protection. While many scholars have debated about issues of extraterritoriality of patents, copyrights, and trademarks, scholars relatively alienated the question of the geographic scope of trade secret law. In the absence of clear guidance from either the Supreme Court or both state and federal legislatures, some courts ruled in favor of extending the scope of state trade secret law to conduct abroad. This practice can cause problems in foreign relations, such as the foreign offense or interference with the sovereignty of the foreign nations. To avoid unintended conflicts with …

Navigating Through The Fog Of Cloud Computing Contracts, T. Noble Foster

T. Noble Foster

This paper explores legal issues associated with cloud computing, provides analysis and commentary on typical clauses found in contracts offered by well-known cloud service providers, and identifies strategies to mitigate the risk of exposure to cloud-based legal claims in the critical areas of data security, privacy, and confidentiality. While current research offers numerous case studies, viewpoints, and technical descriptions of cloud processes, our research provides a close examination of the language used in cloud contract terms. Analysis of these contract terms supports the finding that most standard cloud computing contracts are unevenly balanced in favor of the cloud service provider. …

A New First Amendment Goal Line Defense – It’S Time To Stop The Right Of Publicity Offensive, Mark Conrad

Mark A. Conrad

No abstract provided.

U.S.-Latin American Free Trade Agreements And Access To Medicine, Dominique Lochridge-Gonzales

Dominique Lochridge-Gonzales

U.S.-Latin American Free Trade Agreements and Access to Medicine analyzes the effects of FTA provisions on access to medicine. Access to medicine lies at the heart of the crossroads between the international human right to health and international intellectual property law delineated in TRIPS. True availability of essential medicines to millions of people depends on a balance between the formations of these medicines in the first place (through rewarding innovation) and promulgating rules that allow for practicable access to those medicines. FTAs provide a method for implementing the right to health by fostering practicable access to essential medicines in the …

Banksy Got Back? Problems With Chains Of Unauthorized Derivative Works And Arrangement Rights In Cover Songs Under A Compulsory License, Matthew Adam Eller Esq.

Matthew Adam Eller

This note will analyze the scope of copyright ownership in relation to chains of unauthorized derivative works and chains of arrangement rights in “cover” versions of musical recordings. In particular, the analysis will focus on the gray area in the law where an unauthorized derivative work is created by (“D1”) and then another author creates a second derivative work (“D2”) based off of D1. In situations such as these does the creator of the original derivative work have any rights in their creation if their derivative work was unauthorized? Further, depending on what rights do exist for D1, can the …

Hyperactive Judges: An Empirical Study Of Judge-Dependent "Judicial Hyperactivity" In The Federal Circuit, Ted L. Field

Ted L. Field

This article presents an empirical study of the extent to which individual judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—which has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—engage in what William C. Rooklidge and Matthew F. Weil call “judicial hyperactivity.” This article defines “judicial hyperactivity” as a form of judicial activism in which a judge improperly “elevate[s] his or her judgment above that of another constitutionally significant actor (e.g., Congress, the President, [or] other Article III courts),” where this improper behavior is not necessarily driven by politics or ideology as is traditional judicial activism. This study considers the extent …

E Unum Pluribus: The Limitations On State Law Because Of Foreign Policy Uses Of State Law As A Gap Filler To Meet The International Obligations Of The United States, Llewellyn Gibbons

Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

Unlike many nations where the ratification of a treaty immediately changes its internal laws, in the United States, unless the language of the treaty is self-executing, Congress must affirmatively change domestic laws to conform to the obligations of the treaty. Increasing, it is a modern trend for the United States to represent in international forums that the United States is in conformity with its international obligations because of state statutes or because of common law court decisions. This article looks whether the foreign policy representations of the United States to other countries (in the context of the international intellectual property …

The World As Our Technologist: Visualizing Worldwide Sources Of Technologies Patented In The United States, Richard S. Gruner

Richard S. Gruner

The World as Our Technologist: Visualizing Worldwide Sources

of Technologies Patented in the United States

by

Richard Gruner

Emeritus Professor of Law

John Marshall Law School

ABSTRACT

Patent rewards in the United States incentivize and attract the overseas development of many new technologies used in this country. The United States – as the world’s largest economy – is the primary driver of technology development worldwide. The strength of United States patent laws, court systems, and civil law enforcement processes ensure that parties who produce new inventions of commercial value and who patent and popularize the inventions in the United States …

Incentives Must Change: Addressing The Unpredictability Of Reasonable Royalty Damages, Daniel Mcmanus

daniel mcmanus

ABSTRACT

INCENTIVES MUST CHANGE: ADDRESSING THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF REASONABLE ROYALTY DAMAGES

Current law encourages patentees and defendants in a patent infringement suit to make the most widely varying arguments for reasonable royalty damages. The parties have so much discretion in presenting calculations for reasonable royalty damages that it is not uncommon for the patentee to request damages 80-100 times greater than the infringer’s proposed damages. Permitting so much discretion makes it highly unlikely that the resulting damages will be reasonable, and thus fails to achieve the goal of determining a reasonable royalty.

The problem is simple. Patents are difficult to …

Termination Of Copyright Transfers: The Author Spouse’S Last Laugh, Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

The 1976 Copyright Act provides that an author may unilaterally terminate a transfer of copyright approximately 35 years after the initial transfer. In community property states, state law assumes that through the magic of the operation of state law, the author-spouse transfers the copyright that federal law initially vests in the author to the community property (marital) estate. Author-spouses are now entering the period when they may begin to terminate any putative copyright transfer to the community property estate or terminate other transfers that may be the basis for pre-or-post-nuptial agreements, property settlements, or dissolution decrees in divorce actions. This …

A Case For The Public Domain, Clark Asay

Clark Asay

Over the past several decades open license movements have proven highly successful in the software and content worlds. Such movements rely in part on the belief that greater freedom of use triggers innovative activity that is superior to what a restrictive IP approach produces. Ironically, such open license movements also rely on IP rights to promote their vision of freedom and openness. They do so through IP licenses that, while granting significant freedoms, also impose certain conditions on users such as the “copyleft” requirement in the software world. Such movements rely on this IP-based approach due to fears that, without …

Patents And The University, Peter Lee

Peter Lee

This Article advances two novel claims about the internalization of academic science within patent law and the concomitant evolution of “academic exceptionalism.” Historically, relations between patent law and the university were characterized by mutual exclusion, based in part on normative conflicts between academia and exclusive rights. These normative distinctions informed “academic exceptionalism”—the notion that the patent system should exclude the fruits of academic science or treat academic entities differently than other actors—in patent doctrine. As universities began to embrace patents, however, academic science has become internalized within the traditional commercial narrative of patent protection. Contemporary courts frequently invoke universities’ commercial …

Jurisdiction In Relation To Online Cross-Border Infringements - The Code And The Law, Ulf Maunsbach

Ulf Maunsbach

During recent years the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has proven to be increasingly active in relation to cross-border intellectual property disputes. The relevant cases cover a wide range of issues, from advertisement through use of keywords, to copyright-related issues involved in making protected material available through the Internet. All in all, it might be said that the Internet era has finally reached the Court of Justice. A similar development is visible in Swedish courts. This provides for an unlimited amount of material for further discussion. In this paper I would like to provide a short summary of the recent …

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, Jim Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Tom Folsom, Timothy Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank Pasquale, Elizabeth Reilly, Jeff Samuels, Kathy Strandburg, Kara Swanson, Andrew Torrance, Katharine Van Tassel

Frank A. Pasquale

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions.

Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …

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 …

Cognac After Spanish Champagne ? Geographical Indications As Certification Marks, Daniel J. Gervais

Daniel J Gervais

The Protection of Geographical Names as Certification Marks in common law jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the United States is examined in light of the UK Spansih Champagne and other "Drinks" cases and similar cases in the United States dealing with the name "Cognac."

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, Jim Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Tom Folsom, Timothy Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank Pasquale, Elizabeth Reilly, Jeff Samuels, Kathy Strandburg, Kara Swanson, Andrew Torrance, Katharine Van Tassel

Yaniv Heled

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions.

Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …