Law Commons^™

The Limits Placed By Eec Law On Territorial Protection In Patent Licensing: A Case Study In Community Law-Making, Donald L. Holley

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In this article, Mr. Holley examines the ways in which the EEC Commission's interpretations of the EEC Treaty, European Court decisions, and suggestions made by Member States and industry influence the development of EEC law. By focusing on the Commission's draft patent licensing regulation, the author identifies existing conflicts between preserving patent rights and the EEC objectives of protecting competition and the free flow of goods among the Member States.

Extension Of The Federal Communications Commission's Jurisdiction To The Television Networks, Lance S. Davidson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The Federal Communications Commission's enabling statute, the Communications Act of 1934, provides no statutory authority for the regulation of the television networks. Nonetheless, with judicial approval, the FCC indirectly regulates the networks via its licensing authority over broadcast stations affiliated with the networks and has even promulgated rules by which it directly regulates the networks. This article reviews the case law focusing on the FCC's extension of its jurisdiction to the television networks and to cable television, which is similarly unreferenced in the Act. The article argues that the FCC should have consistent jurisdiction to regulate the cable and broadcast …

Communications Behind Bars: Are We Finally Applying The Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy Test To Custodial Conversations, Lynn Soodik

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This note examines the propriety of surreptitious and nonjudicially authorized electronic surveillance of suspects, pretrial detainees, and incarcerated persons during conversations with persons other than interrogating police officers. After discussing the rationale courts have used to deny prisoners protections in their conversations, this note analyzes the California appellate court decision of Robinson v. Superior Court, which held that conversations between spouses are protected by the United States and California Constitutions. Robinson was granted a hearing by the California Supreme Court on June 25, 1980. The author urges that Robinson be upheld, but argues that the decision should be based solely …

Libel Law In The Twenty-First Century: Defamation And The Electronic Newspaper, Stephen R. Hofer

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Stacked Competition And Phony Deregulation For At&(And)T: The Proposed Telecommunications Competition And Deregulation Act Of 1981, Louis B. Schwartz

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Violence In Professional Sports: A Proposal For Self-Regulation, Don Eugene-Nolan Gibson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Updating The Communications Act: New Electronics, Old Economics, And The Demise Of The Public Interest, Peter J. Kokalis

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Cable Television, Government Regulation, And The First Amendment, Henry Goldberg, Robert W. Ross, Phillip L. Spector

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

State Action Immunity And Antitrust Issues In Cable Television Franchising, Stephen D. Susman, Mark L. D. Wawro

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Municipal Ownership Of Cable Television: Some Issues And Problems, Michael J. Henderson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Unauthorized Pay Television Reception Under Section 605 Of The Communications Act, Allen N. Dixon Iii

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

The Equal Time And Fairness Doctrines: Outdated Or Crucial To American Politics In The 1980s, Howard Downs, Karen Karpen

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The Federal Communications Commission recently voted to urge congressional repeal of the equal opportunities and fairness doctrines. This article evaluates the arguments favoring repeal in light of the probable impact of the media on the political process in the 1980's. Instead of repeal of the doctrines, the authors advocate adoption of a "proportional time law," which would enable broadcasters to concentrate coverage on major political candidates, but also ensure some coverage of minor candidates.

The First Amendment And The Cable Television Operator: An Unprotective Shield Against Public Access Requirements, Michael I. Meyerson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This article focuses on the question of whether state-imposed public access requirements violate the First Amendment rights of the cable television operator. The author rejects a traditional approach to this issue and suggests that the appropriate analysis asks whether the law abridges expression the First Amendment was meant to protect. That is, do cable access requirements abridge speech safeguarded by the First Amendment? The article demonstrates that such requirements do not hinder, but in fact further, fundamental First Amendment interests. Finally, the article shows that access requirements fulfill the standards of the constitutional tests for each classification into which they …

Child Pornography, The First Amendment, And The Media: The Constitutionality Of Super-Obscenity Laws, James W. Moore

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Child pornography statutes have been passed by Congress and most of the states. This note examines one such law, New York section 263.15, which has been declared unconstitutional by the New York Court of Appeals. The author contends that the law impinges on freedom of expression in ways unnecessary to achieve its purpose and should be declared unconstitutional.

Pirates Walk The Plank: The Unauthorized Interception Of Pay Telelvision Transmissions, John H. Works Jr.

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The purpose of this note is to discuss the unauthorized interception of subscription television transmissions and to explain how the Federal Communications Commission and the courts finally arrived at the conclusion that television piracy is illegal activity. Until recently, there has been very little litigation on this question, and the remedies available to the subscription television services. Subscription television companies have attempted to protect their signals either by scrambling them or by transmitting them over microwave frequencies. Pirates have sold equipment capable of either decoding scrambled signals or receiving microwave transmission. The author makes several recommendations on how the unauthorized …

Literature And Libel, Marc A. Franklin, Robert Trager

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This article explores cases in which publications that purport to be fiction have led to claims of defamation. It begins with an analysis of the common law, which shows the central importance of proving that the defamation was "of and concerning" the plaintiff. Next, the article considers the impact of recent constitutional developments in the area of nonfiction defamation. The authors argue that fiction is entitled to no more and no less constitutional protection than nonfiction publications. They thus reject absolute privilege on the one hand and strict liability on the other. Then then develop analogies to the Times-Gertz privilege …

The Regulatory Status Of Cable Television Leased Channels: Issues Of Common Carriage And Preemption, Nicholas P. Miller, W. Randolph Young, Robert H. Ruxin

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

As cable television develops into a communications medium capable of providing a vast array of voice, data and television communications services, there is an increasing interest by local governments in requiring the cable operator to provide access to the cable system through leased channels. The article examines cable leased channels in terms of common carriage and the possible jurisdictional questions raised between the federal, state and local governments. Leased channel requirements can be implemented in such a way so as to impose a common carrier classification of not. Although common carrier obligations for leased channel services may be publicly beneficial, …

After Richmond Newspapers: A Public Right To Attend Civil Trials, Doug Gummerman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

In Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the public and press have a First Amendment right of access to criminal trials. The 1980 decision left many questions unanswered, however. Among them is whether the public's right to attend will someday be extended to include civil trials. This note analyzes the Richmond decision, examines the history of the public civil trial, and arrives at an answer to this question. The currently-recognized exceptions to the open civil trial are then examined, with particular attention paid to the various state statutes which authorize trial closure in certain …

United States Policy Toward The Transfer Of Proprietary Technology: Licenses, Taxes, And Finance, Gary C. Hufbauer, George N. Carlson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Much of the nation's technology is developed in public institutions, especially universities and government research laboratories, and is freely available through libraries and classrooms. Roughly one-half of total United States research and development expenditures are funded by the United States Government, and the findings from this research are generally available to citizens and foreigners at little or no charge. In addition, a great deal of technology that was once guarded by patents or trade secrets has since passed into the public domain. This paper ignores these freely available segments of the national technology base and discusses proprietary technology.

Unctad's Draft Code Of Conduct On The Transfer Of Technology: A Critique, James W. Skelton, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

UNCTAD's fourteenth plenary meeting on May 6, 1980, produced the latest of several attempts to draft such a code. The document is entitled "Draft International Code of Conduct on the Transfer of Technology" (Draft Code), and this draft will be the primary subject of analysis in this article. The drafters of the code face a number of problems, the least of which is the ultimate determination of the code's legal character and, consequently, its legal effect. This determination and other problem areas confronting the drafters, including the code's special preferences for developing countries, the core chapter on restrictive practices, and …

The Transfer Of Technology To Latin America, Gabriel M. Wilner

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This paper focuses on the contractual acquisition of foreign technology through licenses and other contractual arrangements as contrasted with the technological components in the usual direct investment. Such investment is made either in the form of the wholly-owned subsidiary of the transnational corporation or as part of a joint venture. The use of technology as a major component of direct investment has been discouraged over the years, although this trend was reversed in Chile after 1977.

Modern legislation and practice in the regulation of technology transfer is characterized in the several Latin American countries possessing such a regime by administrative …

The Technology Transfer Process: A Vehicle For Continuity And Change, Robert Goldscheider

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The technology transfer or licensing process is a discipline which, if properly appreciated, can be utilized in a wide variety of circumstances. There is a strong parallel with another discipline, music--more particularly, with the playing of a large and complicated church organ.

A man named Johann Sebastian Bach could sit in a drafty church in Leipzig over 200 years ago and create a phenomenon that had an original, and to the ears of most listeners, very wonderful sound. By utilizing the universally recognized notations of music, the staff, clefs, notes of varying duration, sharps, flats, keys, and indications of loudness …

The Uncertain Search For A Design Defect Standard, Steven A.G. Davison

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The European Patent System, Friedrich - Karl Beier

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The formation of the European patent system, which I have presented here only in part and which is still missing one essential element, the Common Market patent, constitutes a milestone in the development of international patent law. No event since the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883 has so drastically changed the system of protection of inventions as the European patent system will. I do not except the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) signed in Washington in 1970 and entered into force over two years ago. It certainly overcomes the territorial approach of the Paris Convention in …

Technology Transfer As An Issue In North/South Negotiations, Homer O. Blair

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For a number of years, negotiations have been taking place on an international scale, usually under the auspices of the United Nations or one of its specialized agencies, on a wide variety of subjects involving technology transfer between the developed countries (the North) and the less developed or developing countries (the South). Three primary groups are involved in the United Nations negotiations. The first is known as the Group of 77, which now includes more than 120 developing countries, including countries in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia. Within this group the degree of development varies from countries such …

Diamond V. Diehr, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Diamond V. Bradley, Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

The Copyright Exception For Derivative Works And The Scope Of Utilization, Carole A. Ellingson

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Combination Patents And Synergism: Must 2 + 2 = 5?

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Home Videorecording And Copyright Law: The Betamax Case

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.