Law Commons^™

Hired To Invent Vs. Works Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor

Articles

This Essay focuses on the interrelation of three legal doctrines that affect the allocation of ownership and attribution of products of the human mind. The first, corporate personhood, grants corporations rights of personhood similar to those of natural persons. The second, the work-made-for-hire doctrine (WMFH) under copyright law, allocates ownership and attribution for copyrightable works to the employer of the natural-person author—even where that employer is a nonnatural, legal person such as a corporation. And the third, shop rights and the hired-to-invent exception, permits courts to grant equitable licenses or assignments to employers for their employees’ inventions.

These three doctrines …

Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

This article sets out to analyze both intellectual property laws and tax systems as applied to computer software. It analyzes software within intellectual property's established doctrinal framework, a difficult task due to the fact that software can encompass some combination of the traits of copyrights, trade dress, patents, and trade secrets. It then examines both the federal and state tax systems governing software. It shows that fitting software within current tax schemes presents unique challenges, as software contains both tangible and intangible elements, is subject to varying intellectual property protections, and can be delivered through various media. The article argues …