Law Commons^™

Squeezing The Juice® Out Of The Washington Redskins®: Intellectual Property Rights In "Scandalous" And "Disparaging" Trademarks After Harjo V. Pro-Football Inc., Cameron Smith

Washington Law Review

In Harjo v. Pro-Football Inc., the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled the federally registered trademarks THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS, REDSKINS, and REDSKINETIES after finding them to be disparaging matter under section 2(a) of the Lanham Act. Pro-Football has appealed the Board's decision to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This Note argues that Harjo's adoption of the "substantial composite" standard for analyzing disparaging trademarks potentially ignores the majority of the implicated group members' viewpoints and promotes section 2(a) trademark cancellations. In addition, the liberal standing requirements for opposition and cancellation proceedings combined with Harlo's disparagement doctrine …

The Attibution Right In The United States: Caught In The Crossfire Between Copyright And Section 43(A), Roberta Rosenthal Kwall

Washington Law Review

The human impulse for attribution symbolizes the linkage between an author and her creative work. In many countries, authors are afforded a right of attribution as part of a broader doctrine known as moral rights. The United States, however, does not adequately protect moral rights. This Article focuses exclusively on the right of attribution as one component of the moral rights doctrine. Initially, it examines the connection between copyright law and the right of attribution and establishes the inadequacy of the current copyright law as a means of safeguarding the right of attribution. Next, it addresses why section 43(a) of …

How Wide Should The Gate Of "Technology" Be? Patentability Of Business Methods In China, Joy Y. Xiang

Washington International Law Journal

China regards business methods to be a form of mental activity, and consequently excludes them from patent protection. In recent years, along with the proliferation of computer, telecommunication, and Internet technologies, the line between business methods and technology has blurred. As a result, other patent systems, such as U.S. patent law, have modified or are re-evaluating their patent treatment of business methods. The Chinese patent system is designed to promote the progress of science and technology. Business methods having no technical characters are not technological art. It would thus be overly inclusive to regard every business method as "technology" and …

A Comparative Analysis Of Selected Aspects Of Patent Law In China And The United States, Louis S. Sorell

Washington International Law Journal

China's recent admission to the World Trade Organization will bring increased attention to China's patent law, especially as foreign companies expand their technology-based presence in China. This Article summarizes the development of patent law in the United States and China, and compares various aspects of Chinese and American patent law. These aspects include the administrative and judicial hierarchy of the American and Chinese patent systems, patentability requirements, infringement and validity issues, the availability of injunctive relief, and the determination of monetary damages. The Article also discusses the compulsory licensing provisions of China's patent law. Similarities and differences of each patent …

International Jurisdiction And Enforcement Of Judgments In The Era Of Global Networks: Irrelevance Of, Goals For, And Comments On The Current Proposals, Jonathan A. Franklin, Roberta J. Morris

Librarians' Articles

Last fall a Symposium at Chicago-Kent College of Law entitled "Constructing International Intellectual Property Law: The Role of National Courts," held on October 18-19, 2001, brought together scholars interested in a group of problems related to the relationship between harmonized rules of international civil procedure and diverse nationally-based rules of intellectual property. Subsequently, extensive discussions between the authors developed this Article into its present form.

Just Who Is The Person Having Ordinary Skill In The Art? Patent Law's Mysterious Personage, Joseph P. Meara

Washington Law Review

Various patent validity and infringement questions are decided against the standard of the "person having ordinary skill in the art" (Phosita). For example, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), an invention must be nonobvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to be granted a patent. In this context, the Federal Circuit has set out six factors for measuring the level of skill of Phosita, yet the court has provided remarkably little guidance in their use and their relationship to nonobviousness. This situation has led to confusion and difficulties among courts trying to assess Phosita's skill. This Comment argues that …

Patent Protection For Pharmaceuticals: A Comparative Study Of The Law In The United States And Canada, Mary Atkinson

Washington International Law Journal

A fundamental purpose of patent law is to encourage the development of new inventions by granting to the inventor exclusivity in the marketplace for a limited period of time. Patent law in the area of pharmaceuticals is complicated by the responsibility of governments not only to encourage research and development of new drugs, but also to assure that new drugs are widely available and affordable, as well as safe and effective. Governments, influenced by market and political philosophies, design patent laws and drug regulatory schemes to meet these responsibilities. The United States has a well-developed pharmaceutical industry and private-payer health …

Rethinking The United States First-To-Invent Principle From A Comparative Law Perspective: A Proposal To Restructure § 102 Novelty And Priority Provisions, Toshiko Takenaka

Articles

This Article first examines the novelty and priority provisions of first-to-file countries, and then compares them with U.S. counterparts to identify major differences and determine why these differences result. The Article discusses the origins of the complex structure adopted by § 102 to define prior art and the difficult interpretation given to terms used in the novelty definition. This Article then reviews the USPTO's practice of the novelty examination and the priority determination in interference proceedings. This review confirms the first-to-file patent professional's perception that the United States, in fact, follows the first-to-file principle, although it also provides an exception …

De-Bugging Open Source Software Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Home computer users and businesses often rely on software developed by unconventional programmers known as "hackers." Hackers claim that the code they develop is superior in quality to the code developed by commercial software firms because hackers freely share the code they develop. This code sharing enables a multitude of programmers from around the world to rapidly find and fix bugs. The legal mechanism that enables hackers to deploy this worldwide team of de-buggers is a license agreement or, to be more precise,an assortment of license agreements known as "open source" licenses.

Although open source software developers may regularly fix …

Commercial Law Collides With Cyberspace: The Trouble With Perfection – Insecurity Interests In The New Corporate Asset, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The recent downturn in the economy, particularly in the e-commerce sector, reveals many e-companies heading toward bankruptcy with cyberassets, such as domain names, as their most valuable corporate assets. Lending institutions and other creditors that have extended loans to such e-companies obviously want to get their hands on these bankrupt estates. Which creditor will have priority in the new cybercollateral of domain names? The answer to creditor priority questions may depend on whether domain names are intangible property for purposes of secured transactions. If so, should security interests in domain names be perfected under the Uniform Commercial Code or under …

Cyberproperty And Judicial Dissonance: The Trouble With Domain Name Classification, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The nature of cyberspace continues to be woven into the fabric of our daily existence. Not surprisingly, cyberspace and the expansion of e-commerce pose challenges to existing law, particularly the legal definition of cyberproperty domain names. The nature of cyberspace allows many e-companies to possess no traditional assets such as buildings and inventories. Some e-companies own few computers, often using service providers to maintain their web sites. In the virtual space that e-companies inhabit, the primary assets that e-companies own are intangibles such as domain names, customer information, and intellectual property that includes business method patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Domain …

Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.

The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …