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Full-Text Articles in Law
Nonparty Interests In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, David A. Hoffman, Cathy Hwang
Nonparty Interests In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, David A. Hoffman, Cathy Hwang
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Contract law has one overarching goal: to advance the legitimate interests of the contracting parties. For the most part, scholars, judges, and parties embrace this party primacy norm, recognizing only a few exceptions, such as mandatory rules that bar enforcement of agreements that harm others. This Article describes a distinct species of previously unnoticed contract law rules that advance nonparty interests, which it calls “nonparty defaults."
In doing so, this Article makes three contributions to the contract law literature. First, it identifies nonparty defaults as a judicial technique. It shows how courts deviate from the party primary norm with surprising …
Propertizing Fair Use, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Propertizing Fair Use, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
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In its current form, fair use doctrine provides a personal defense that applies narrowly to the specific use by the specific user. The landmark case of Google v. Oracle, currently pending before the Supreme Court, illustrates why this is problematic. Even if the Court were to rule that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API’s was fair, the ruling would not protect the numerous parties that developed Java applications for the Android operating system; it would only shelter Google and Google’s particular use. This is not an isolated problem; the per use/per user rule cuts across fair uses of copyrighted …
Restructuring Copyright Infringement, Gideon Parchomovsky, Abraham Bell
Restructuring Copyright Infringement, Gideon Parchomovsky, Abraham Bell
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Copyright law employs a one-size-fits-all strict liability regime against all unauthorized users of copyrighted works. The current regime takes no account of the blameworthiness of the unauthorized user or of the information costs she faces. Nor does it consider ways in which the rightsholders may have contributed to potential infringements, or ways in which they could have cheaply avoided them. A non-consensual use of a copyrighted work entitles copyright owners to the full panoply of remedies available under the Copyright Act, including supra-compensatory damage awards, disgorgement of profits and injunctive relief. This liability regime is unjust, as it largely fails …
Buying Monopoly: Antitrust Limits On Damages For Externally Acquired Patents, Erik N. Hovenkamp, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Buying Monopoly: Antitrust Limits On Damages For Externally Acquired Patents, Erik N. Hovenkamp, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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The “monopoly” authorized by the Patent Act refers to the exclusionary power of individual patents. That is not the same thing as the acquisition of individual patent rights into portfolios that dominate a market, something that the Patent Act never justifies and that the antitrust laws rightfully prohibit.
Most patent assignments are procompetitive and serve to promote the efficient commercialization of patented inventions. However, patent acquisitions may also be used to combine substitute patents from external patentees, giving the acquirer an unearned monopoly position in the relevant technology market. A producer requires only one of the substitutes, but by acquiring …
The Cape Town Convention’S Improbable-But-Possible Progeny Part Two: Bilateral Investment Treaty-Like Enforcement Mechanism, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
The Cape Town Convention’S Improbable-But-Possible Progeny Part Two: Bilateral Investment Treaty-Like Enforcement Mechanism, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
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This Essay is Part Two of a two-part essay series that outlines and evaluates two possible future international instruments. Each instrument draws substantial inspiration from the Cape Town Convention and its Aircraft Protocol (together, the “Convention”). The Convention governs the secured financing and leasing of large commercial aircraft, aircraft engines, and helicopters. It entered into force in 2006. It has been adopted by sixty-six Contracting States (fifty-eight of which have adopted the Aircraft Protocol), including the U.S., China, the E.U., India, Ireland, Luxembourg, Russia, and South Africa.
This Part of the Essay explores whether an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) feature …
Harm To Competition Or Innovation, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Harm To Competition Or Innovation, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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This book of CASES AND MATERIALS ON INNOVATION AND COMPETITION POLICY is intended for educational use. The book is free for all to use subject to an open source license agreement. It differs from IP/antitrust casebooks in that it considers numerous sources of competition policy in addition to antitrust, including those that emanate from the intellectual property laws themselves, and also related issues such as the relationship between market structure and innovation, the competitive consequences of regulatory rules governing technology competition such as net neutrality and interconnection, misuse, the first sale doctrine, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Chapters …
Notice And Patent Remedies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Notice And Patent Remedies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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In private enforcement systems such as the one for patents, remedies perform the “public” function of determining the optimal amount of protection and deterrence. If every patent were properly granted and had just the right scope to incentivize innovation, then strict enforcement and harsh penalties for infringement would be a good idea. But in a world where too many patents are granted, their boundaries are often ambiguous and scope excessive, things are not so simple. The expected likelihood and magnitude of the penalty determines the number of infringement suits and the litigation resources that will be poured into them. As …