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Full-Text Articles in Law
Using Public Disclosure As The Vesting Point For Moral Rights Under The Visual Artists Rights Act, Elizabeth M. Bock
Using Public Disclosure As The Vesting Point For Moral Rights Under The Visual Artists Rights Act, Elizabeth M. Bock
Michigan Law Review
In 2010, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit confronted the novel question of when moral rights protections vest under the Visual Artists Rights Act. In Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc. v. Bichel, the First Circuit determined that the protections of the Visual Artists Rights Act begin when a work is "created" under the Copyright Act. This Note argues that this decision harms moral rights conceptually and is likely to result in unpredictable and inconsistent decisions. This Note proposes instead that these statutory protections should vest when an artist determines that his work is complete and presents …
Toward A Trips Truce, Patricia L. Judd
Toward A Trips Truce, Patricia L. Judd
Michigan Journal of International Law
The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS or Agreement), now over fifteen years old, regulates a marketplace characterized by extraordinary dynamism, influenced by the constant forces of globalization and technological evolution. Attempts to regulate this market raise natural, persistent questions concerning the Agreement's ability to serve its respective constituencies and adapt to change. The Agreement operates in the midst of an age-old dynamic pitting developing and developed countries against one another, especially when it comes to domestic enforcement against piracy and counterfeiting-a dynamic in which TRIPS has been criticized as a one-sided instrument. …
Innovative Copyright, Greg Lastowka
Innovative Copyright, Greg Lastowka
Michigan Law Review
For over a decade, Michael Carrier has been exploring the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property ("IP") law, contributing many articles that offer new solutions and approaches to the vexing problems confronting the law of innovation. Carrier's academic writing is situated in a voluminous scholarly discourse about the appropriate rules and goals of the laws of copyright, patent, and antitrust. While Carrier easily could have written an "insider" tome for specialists in this area, his new book, Innovation for the 21st Century, is targeted at a broader audience. Carrier's book is directed at legislators, jurists, and opinion makers-as well as …
Databases And Dynamism, Michal Shur-Ofry
Databases And Dynamism, Michal Shur-Ofry
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Databases are generally perceived in legal scholarship as static warehouses, storing up valuable facts and information. Accordingly, scholarship on copyright protection of databases typically concentrates on the social need to access their content. This Article seeks to shift the focus of the debate, arguing that the copyrightdatabases debate is not merely a static "access to information" story. Instead, it is a dynamic story of relations, hierarchies, and interactions between pieces of information, determined by database creators. It is also a story of patterns, categories, selections, and taxonomies that are often invisible to the naked eye, but that influence our perceptions …
The Endowment Effect In Ip Transactions: The Case Against Debiasing, Ofer Tur-Sinai
The Endowment Effect In Ip Transactions: The Case Against Debiasing, Ofer Tur-Sinai
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Article contains a critical discussion of recent studies by Christopher Buccafusco and Christopher Sprigman concerning the role of the endowment effect in intellectual property transactions. According to the thesis presented in these studies, the existence of an endowment effect in the markets for IP goods causes inefficiencies. In order to counteract such inefficiencies, the authors argue, IP rights must be weakened in various ways, including shifting toward liability rules, adding formalities in copyright law, and expanding the fair use doctrine. The thesis as presented is groundbreaking and would have broad implications. This Article, however, points out several shortcomings of …
Hatch-Waxmanizing Copyright, Michal Shur-Ofry
Hatch-Waxmanizing Copyright, Michal Shur-Ofry
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
This Essay presents a novel proposal for counter balancing "copyright overspills." In the background of the discussion is the common reality of users succumbing to rights holders' attempts to license uses which are most likely fair uses or completely free of copyright protection. These practices have attracted considerable attention in recent literature. Most scholarly proposals in this context emphasize the need to clarify the contours of the fair use doctrine and to remove doctrinal ambiguities. Yet these initiatives are probably insufficient to overcome users' risk aversion in copyright markets due to an inherent structural imbalance within copyright law. While the …
Paper Tigers: Rethinking The Relationship Between Copyright And Scholarly Publishing, Alissa Centivany
Paper Tigers: Rethinking The Relationship Between Copyright And Scholarly Publishing, Alissa Centivany
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Discontent is growing in academia over the practices of the proprietary scholarly publishing industry. Scholars and universities criticize the expensive subscription fees, restrictive access policies, and copyright assignment requirements of many journals. These practices seem fundamentally unfair given that the industries' two main inputs-articles and peer-review-are provided to it free of charge. Furthermore, while many publishers continue to enjoy substantial profit margins, many elite university libraries have been forced to triage their collections, choosing between purchasing monographs or subscribing to journals, or in some cases, doing away with "non-essential" materials altogether. The situation is even more dire for non-elite schools, …
Readers' Copyright, Jessica D. Litman
Readers' Copyright, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
My goal in this project is to reclaim copyright for readers (and listeners, viewers, and other members of the audience). I think, and will try to persuade you, that the gradual and relatively recent disappearance of readers’ interests from the core of copyright’s perceived goals has unbalanced the copyright system. It may have prompted, at least in part, the scholarly critique of copyright that has fueled copyright lawyers’ impression that “so many in academia side with the pirates.” It may also be responsible for much of the deterioration in public support for copyright. I argue here that copyright seems out …