Law Commons^™

Locke-Ing Down Nonsense Trademarks: Applying The Property Theory Of John Locke To The Issue Of Nonsense Trademarks, Jake H. Howell

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

In 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office received almost half a million trademark applications. This was the tenth year in a row in which the number of applications received broke the record from the previous year. Since 2015 there has been a marked increase in the number of applications for trademarks that are unusual. These applications are for trademarks that consist of an apparently random string of letters unpronounceable in English and with no meaning in another language. These unusual trademarks have come to be known as nonsense trademarks. Nonsense trademarks are a growing problem in intellectual property. …

The Development Of An Expectations Theory Of Patent Law By Creating A Nexus With John Locke's Theory Of Private Property, Jason D. Newman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

This thesis reviews the Lockean justification of private physical property as an explanation for patent “property,” identifies its weaknesses, and modifies it to create a new theory of patent law based on expectations. After describing the characteristics of technical information, that description is applied to three different interpretations of the Lockean condition which demonstrate a strain in defining technical knowledge as property. The technical information paradigm is then applied to an expectations theory, which demonstrates a broad connection to the Lockean conditions, but maintains a fit within a wider patent law interpretation. The expectations theory also creates an avenue …

Intellectual Property And The Prisoner’S Dilemma: A Game Theory Justification Of Copyrights, Patents, And Trade Secrets, Adam D. Moore

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

In this article, I will offer an argument for the protection of intellectual property based on individual self-interest and prudence. In large part, this argument will parallel considerations that arise in a prisoner’s dilemma game. In brief, allowing content to be unprotected in terms of free access leads to a sub-optimal outcome where creation and innovation are suppressed. Adopting the institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret is one way to avoid these sub-optimal results.

The Tragedy Of The Commons: A Hybrid Approach To Trade Secret Legal Theory, Jonathan R.K. Stroud

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Current theories governing trade secrets law incompletely and inadequately protect substantial investment in innovation, rendering them inefficient, reactionary, and largely illusory. Trade secret law exists to fill a gap between other forms of intellectual property and to encourage substantial investment in innovation and to recoup the time and money expended pursuing it, to the long-term benefit of the greater public good. Without strong trade secret protections, the “tragedy of the commons” would lead to the unfair destruction of the fruits of capital and labor and discourage investment in activities calculated to benefit the public, thus hurting our society. I propose …

Toward A Lockean Moral Justification Of Legal Protection Of Intellectual Property, Kenneth Einar Himma

San Diego Law Review

This Article attempts to provide the beginnings of a viable moral justification for recognizing and providing legal protection of intellectual property. The argument follows a line of arguments that is fairly characterized as “inspired” by John Locke’s attempt to justify legal protection of what he took to be a natural, objective, moral right to material property. That is to say, it is Lockean in spirit in the following sense: Locke grounds his argument for original acquisition in the idea that a person is justified in acquiring something from the commons in virtue of an investment he makes of something that …

The Relationship Between Foundations And Principles In Ip Law, Robert P. Merges

San Diego Law Review

In my book Justifying Intellectual Property (JIP), I wrote about what I call the “foundations” of the field of intellectual property (IP) law. I tried to distinguish between a foundational level of discourse and another level, the level of basic principles. In the San Diego conference at which my book was discussed—and in several other settings as well—the most frequent and persistent line of questioning about my book centered on the relationship between these two levels. That is what this brief Article is about.

A Lockean Theory Of Intellectual Property Revisited, Adam D. Moore

San Diego Law Review

The primary, and perhaps sole, function of government according to Locke was to secure and protect the lives, liberties, and property of individuals who consented, explicitly or tacitly, to a specific political union. The question that I will address in this Article, and one that I took up over fifteen years ago, is: should we consider intellectual works to be the proper subjects of Lockean property claims? My answer then and now is “yes,” with the acknowledgement that such a view may require substantial revisions to Anglo-American systems of intellectual property. I will argue that intellectual property rights are no …

Managing The Intellectual Property Sprawl, Shubha Ghosh

San Diego Law Review

Professor Merges, despite the centrality of creative persons to his argument, organizes a set of ideas that are conducive to refocusing intellectual property law on users. I present this user-focused argument in this Article through the following five Parts. Part II explains my suggested approach to questions about the design of intellectual property law—an approach based on the new institutional economics and the work of Ronald Coase. Part II also addresses objections to this approach. Part III identifies the user in Professor Merges’s high-level principles grounded in Locke, Kant, and Rawls. Part IV follows this argument with a closer examination …

Possessing Trademarks: Can Blackstone Or Locke Apply To Fast Food, Grocery Stores, And Virtual Sex Toys?, Jesse R. Dill

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Trademark law has evolved extensively over time and is justified today for different reasons than when American law first recognized it. Scholars today question whether trademarks should now be accepted as a form of real property. Two examples of trademark problems in the global economy demonstrate that the time has come for marks to be recognized as property. Whether business entities are entering new territories or consumers are crossing borders to new jurisdictions with greater ease than ever before, trademark must adapt to the demands of modern commercial competitors. This Comment takes the position that these demands require treating trademarks …

Current Patent Laws Cannot Claim The Backing Of Human Rights, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In the dispute over the enforcement of pharmaceutical patents, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is sometimes cited as giving patent protection the status of a 'human right'. It is true that the ICESCR provides for ‘the right of everyone’ ‘[t]o benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author’. But that does not mean that patent protection is a human right. Patent fails as a human right for many reasons, one of which is the lack of fit between current patent …

Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …

Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This article makes a simple suggestion. Copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Copyright. When new artists make transformative use of existing works in settings not characterized by pre-use commercial negotiations, copyright should avoid imposing a distorting burden.

Fair Use In American And Continental Laws, Omar M.A. Obeidat

LLM Theses and Essays

Intellectual property, unlike tangible property, does not exclusively occupy one place at a designated time. Instead, intellectual property is composed of information which can be reproduced or used in multiple places at any given time. This fundamental difference between intellectual and tangible property is reflected in the legal provisions that regulate these types of property. There are two dominant theories that justify the legal protection of intellectual property: the individualistic European approach, and the commercial Anglo-American approach. Under the European approach, the protection of the creation is a natural right guaranteed to the author. In other words, natural law guarantees …

Draft Of Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Lawyers more than most people should be aware that what language calls "facts" are not necessarily equivalent to things that exist in the world. After all, when in ordinary conversation someone says "It's a fact that this [ X ] happened," the speaker usually means, "I believe the thing I describe has happened in the world". But when a litigator says something is a "fact" she often means only that a good faith argument can be made on behalf of its existence. Two sets of fact finders can look at the same event and come to diametrically opposed conclusions-- each …

Draft Of A Labor Theory Of Property - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

The Supreme Court in several recent cases has flirted with the notion that labor gives one an entitlement to ownership: a legal right to bar others from the fruits of that labor or to extract payment from them if they use the fruits without permission. Sometimes articulated in terms of "natural rights," and sometimes in terms of "fairness," this notion is at apparent odds with contract law's insistence that the only "fruits of labor" one is obligated to pay for are those one has agreed in advance to buy.

Notes On Misc Re Paper: Property Preemption - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Sears/Compco said anything not protected by patent copyright etc is not subject to state anti-copying protection. Goldstein says Sears/Compco didn't mean that exactly- rather, states can't control copying where fed statutory policies would be in conflict with the state protection. Section 102b and generations of copyright cases say ideas, systems, etc., are not copyrightable. That wd seem to suggest that even under Goldstein, ideas, etc can't be protected against state law.[1] However, a 1 iteral reading of 301 might suggest Cong decided there should be no preE of such state law protection of ideas.

Notes On Demarcation And Other Issues - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Not only is there a problem with demarking the resource (e.g., the problem of larger and larger generality that Hand tries to deal with) but there's also a problem with demarking the TYPE OF USE. In DOW JONES, for example, the defendant was merely making reference to (not copying)the average; ditto the NFL case.