Law Commons^™

Navigating The Identity Thicket: Trademark's Lost Theory Of Personality, The Right Of Publicity, And Preemption, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

Both trademark and unfair competition laws and state right of publicity laws protect against unauthorized uses of a person’s identity. Increasingly, however, these rights are working at odds with one another, and can point in different directions with regard to who controls a person’s name, likeness, and broader indicia of identity. This creates what I call an "identity thicket" of overlapping and conflicting rights over a person’s identity. Current jurisprudence provides little to no guidance on the most basic questions surrounding this thicket, such as what right to use a person’s identity, if any, flows from the transfer of marks …

Nothing Is Inevitable: A Rejection Of The Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine Under The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Jacqueline R. Mancini

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Until June 2013, Manish Desai worked for Molon Motor and Coil Corporation (“Molon”) as Head of Quality Control. In June of that year, Desai left Molon to take a position with a competitor of Molon, Nidec Motor Corporation (“Nidec”). Molon brought suit against Nidec for trade secret misappropriation and alleged that Desai copied confidential information onto a flash drive before his departure. Based on these allegations, Molon argued not only that Desai unlawfully disclosed its trade secrets but also that “Nidec used and continues to use that information.” Molon brought suit under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and …

Is The Federal Circuit Learning Its Lessons? A Case Study Of Bpcia Preemption, Mary Lafleur

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Getting Patent Preemption Right, Camilla A. Hrdy

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Why The Copyright Act Expressly Preempts State-Level Public Performance Rights In Pre-1972 Recordings, James Fahringer

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Over the past several years, two former bandmates in the 1960s rock group, The Turtles, have initiated several lawsuits against the popular music streaming services, Pandora and Sirius XM, arguing that the band owns common law copyrights in the sound recordings of its songs, and that these state-level copyrights grant the band an exclusive public performance right in its sound recordings. If accepted, this argument has the potential to significantly distort federal copyright policy because states would not be constrained by any of the balancing features of the Copyright Act, including Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors for Internet …

Droit De Suite, Copyright’S First Sale Doctrine And Preemption Of State Law, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

The primary focus of this article is whether California’s forty-year old droit de suite statute; the California Resale Royalty Act (CRRA), is subject to federal preemption under the Copyright Act. This issue is now being litigated in the Ninth Circuit, and this article concludes that the CRRA is preempted under section 301(a) of the Copyright Act and under the Supremacy Clause because it at odds with copyright’s well-established first sale doctrine.

The basic idea of droit de suite is that each time an artist’s work is resold by a dealer or auction house, the artist is entitled to a royalty, …

Complete Preemption And Copyright: Toward A Successive Analysis, Mark Lindsay

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Other Side Of Garcia:The Right Of Publicity And Copyright Preemption, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is adapted from a talk that I gave on October 2, 2015 at Columbia Law School’s annual Kernochan Center Symposium. The all-day conference focused on Copyright Outside the Box. The essay considers the aftermath of Garcia v. Google, Inc., and the Ninth Circuit’s suggestion in that case that Garcia might have a right of publicity claim against the filmmakers, even though her copyright claim failed.

The essay provides a partial update of my prior work, Copyright Preemption and the Right of Publicity, 36 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 199 (2002), and suggests that despite numerous cases over …

[Un]Happy Together: Why The Supremacy Clause Preempts State Law Digital Performance Rights In Radio-Like Streaming Of Pre-1972 Sound Recordings, Julie L. Ross

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Lovers of the music of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Etta James, and hundreds of other recording artists whose records were made before February 15, 1972, may soon have a hard time hearing these great artists on any satellite or Internet radio service. Recently, two federal district courts have found that state laws were violated when satellite radio broadcaster Sirius XM Radio included pre-1972 sound recordings in its broadcasts without the owners’ permission, but these courts did not consider-–and the parties did not argue-–how the Supremacy Clause applies to those state law claims. This article argues that state laws purporting to …

Federalism, First Amendment & Patents: The Fraud Fallacy, Robin C. Feldman

Robin C Feldman

Short-Circuiting Contract Law: The Federal Circuit's Contract Law Jurisprudence And Intellectual Property Federalism, Shubha Ghosh

Shubha Ghosh

The Federal Circuit was established in 1982 as an appellate court with limited jurisdiction over patent claims. However, the Federal Circuit has used this limited jurisdiction to expand its reach into contract law, developing a federal common law of contract. Given the growing importance of patent litigation in the past three decades, this creation of an independent body of contract law creates uncertainty in transactions involving patents. This troublesome development received attention in Stanford v Roche, a 2011 Supreme Court decision upholding the Federal Circuit's invalidation of a patent assignment to Stanford University. This Article documents the development of …

Licence Agreements And Copyright: An Examination Of The Issues, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

In this presentation I will discuss some of the factors that are relevant to an understanding of the relationship between copyright and private ordering of legal obligations such as licensing agreements and technological protection measures. I will conclude that there is a strong argument to be made that provisions purporting to limit fair dealing and other exceptions may be unenforceable.

News On The Internet, Robert Denicola

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Newspapers are in trouble. Circulation and advertising are down as readers shift from print to online media. Although changing reader preferences and the loss of lucrative classified advertising to online sources are major worries, the news media seems preoccupied with news aggregators and bloggers who distribute news content on the internet without permission. Newspapers are not the only ones worried about the unauthorized distribution of "their" news on the internet. Financial services companies are unhappy about the distribution of their "hot" stock recommendations and other content providers seek to control online news ranging from movie schedules to business ratings. Traditional …

An Economic View Of Innovation And Property Right Protection In The Expanded Regulatory State, J. Miles Hanisee

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beneficiaries Of Misconduct: A Direct Approach To It Theft, Andrew Popper

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Stolen information technology (IT) is a domestic and global problem. Theft of IT by upstream producers has a pernicious effect on the competitive market and violates fundamental policies designed to protect those who create and invent such assets. Companies profiting from stolen IT are not just free-riding on the successes of those who design and produce the products and ideas that are a driving force in the U.S. economy – they are destabilizing rational pricing and distorting lawful competition by virtue of outright theft. Current legal recourse is insufficient to address such misconduct; new approaches are needed at the state …

Beneficiaries Of Misconduct: A Direct Approach To It Theft, Andrew Popper

Andrew Popper

Stolen information technology (IT) is a domestic and global problem. Theft of IT by upstream producers has a pernicious effect on the competitive market and violates fundamental policies designed to protect those who create and invent such assets. Companies profiting from stolen IT are not just free-riding on the successes of those who design and produce the products and ideas that are a driving force in the U.S. economy – they are destabilizing rational pricing and distorting lawful competition by virtue of outright theft. Current legal recourse is insufficient to address such misconduct; new approaches are needed at the state …

Beneficiaries Of Misconduct: A Direct Approach To It Theft, Andrew Popper

Andrew Popper

Stolen information technology (IT) is a domestic and global problem. Theft of IT by upstream producers has a pernicious effect on the competitive market and violates fundamental policies designed to protect those who create and invent such assets. Companies profiting from stolen IT are not just free-riding on the successes of those who design and produce the products and ideas that are a driving force in the U.S. economy – they are destabilizing rational pricing and distorting lawful competition by virtue of outright theft. Current legal recourse is insufficient to address such misconduct; new approaches are needed at the state …

Copyright Preemption Of Contracts, Christina Bohannan

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Virtual Worlds: Copyright And Contract At The Dawn Of The Virtual Age, Erez Reuveni

Erez Reuveni

This Article argues that copyright law can and should apply to artistic and literary creations occurring entirely in virtual worlds. First, the Article introduces the concept of virtual worlds as places millions of people visit not only for entertainment but also for life and work. Second, the Article reviews the philosophical justifications for copyright, examines objections to applying copyright to virtual, rather than real, creative works, and concludes that neither precludes copyright for virtual creations. Third, the Article articulates how copyright law would function within virtual spaces and reviews copyrightable creations from the perspective of both game developers and players. …

Addressing The Incoherency Of The Preemption Provision Of The Copyright Act Of 1976, Joseph P. Bauer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Section 301 of the Copyright Act of 1976 expressly preempts state law actions that are within the "general scope of copyright" and that assert claims that are "equivalent to" the rights conferred by the Act. The Act eliminated the previous system of common law copyright for unpublished works, which had prevailed under the prior 1909 Copyright Act. By federalizing copyright law, the drafters of the statute sought to achieve uniformity and to avoid the potential for state protection of infinite duration.

The legislative history of § 301 stated that this preemption provision was set forth "in the clearest and most …

Collateralizing Intellectual Property, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

This Article identifies and critiques the collateralization of intellectual property, revealing the complexity of intersecting secured transaction law, namely Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, and doctrinal intellectual property laws such as patent law, copyright law, and trademark law. The inquiry challenges the silence surrounding the pervasive use of intellectual property as collateral in secured financing and suggests changes to the existing framework on secured financing law.

The Article proceeds as follows: Part II discusses the normative intellectual property rights for patents, copyrights, and trademarks and how such rights are utilized as corporate assets. Part III describes different forms …

Misunderestimating Dastar: How The Supreme Court Unwittingly Revolutionized Copyright Preemption, Tom W. Bell

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Initial Interest Confusion: Standing At The Crossroads Of Trademark Law, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

While the benchmark of trademark infringement traditionally has been a demonstration that consumers are likely to be confused by the use of a similar or identical trademark to identify the goods or services of another, a court-created doctrine called initial interest confusion allows liability for trademark infringement solely on the basis that a consumer might initially be interested, attracted, or distracted by a competitor's, or even a non-competitor's, product or service. Initial interest confusion is being used with increasing frequency, especially on the Internet, to shut down speech critical of trademark holders and their products and services, to prevent comparative …

Copyright Preemption And The Right Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the conflict between an ever-expanding right of publicity and the federally guaranteed rights provided by copyright law. This conflict is highlighted in the Wendt v. Host International case in which the actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger from Cheers used the right of publicity to prevent the show's creators from licensing the use of the Norm and Cliff characters in the decor of a chain of airport bars. Even though the licensing of the characters was explicitly allowed under copyright law, the Ninth Circuit held that the right of publicity prevented the creators from doing so. Similarly, …

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 …

The Slippery Slope Of Secrecy: Why Patent Law Preempts Reverse-Engineering Clauses In Shrink-Wrap Licenses, John E. Mauk

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Promise And Perils Of Strategic Publication To Create Prior Art: A Response To Professor Parchomovsky, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

In a provocative recent article in the Michigan Law Review, Professor Gideon Parchomovsky observes that a firm racing with a competitor to make a patentable invention might find it strategically advantageous to publish interim research results rather than risk losing a patent race. This strategy exploits legal rules limiting patent protection to technological advances that are new and "nonobvious" in light of the "prior art" or preexisting knowledge in the field. By publishing research results, a firm adds to the prior art and thereby limits what may be patented in the future. Parchomovsky posits that, before it is able to …

Legislative Process And Commercial Law: Lessons From The Copyright Act Of 1976 And The Uniform Commercial Code, Harold R. Weinberg, William J. Woodward Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Overlap and conflict are inevitable in any legal system in which a federal government and state governments both have authority to enact laws. In our federal system, the Constitution's Supremacy Clause identifies federal law as preeminent in case of conflict. When conflict develops and litigation is required to determine whether state or federal law controls the issue at hand, our system analyzes the problem using the term preemption as a basis for analysis.

This Article explores the federal legislative process that precedes judicial preemption decisions. By studying the legislative process for its sensitivity to preemption issues, possible ways to modify …

State Trademark And Unfair Competition Law By The United States Trademark Association , Jeffrey E. Jacobson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Federal Preemption Of The Right Of Publicity In Sing-Alike Cases, Leonard A. Wohl

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.