Law Commons^™

The Right Of Publicity's Intellectual Property Turn, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

The Article is adapted from a keynote lecture about my book, THE RIGHT OF PUBLICITY: PRIVACY REIMAGINED FOR A PUBLIC WORLD (Harvard Univ. Press 2018), delivered at Columbia Law School for its symposium, “Owning Personality: The Expanding Right of Publicity.” The book challenges the conventional historical and theoretical understanding of the right of publicity. By uncovering the history of the right of publicity’s development, the book reveals solutions to current clashes with free speech, individual liberty, and copyright law, as well as some opportunities for better protecting privacy in the digital age.

The lecture (as adapted for this Article) explores …

Intellectual Property Harms: A Paradigm For The Twenty-First Century, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay is part of a larger book project that investigates how contemporary intellectual property debates, especially in the digital age, are taking place over less familiar terrain: fundamental rights and values. Its argument draws from the diverse, personal accounts of interviews from everyday creators and innovators and focuses on descriptions of harms and, as some say “abuses,” they suffer within their practicing communities. The harms are not described are the usual harms that intellectual property law is understood to prevent. Typically, intellectual property injuries are conceived in individual terms and as economic injuries. An infringer is a thief. …

The Right Of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined For New York?, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is based on a featured lecture that I gave as part of the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal’s 2 symposium on a proposed right of publicity law in New York. The essay draws from my recent book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World, published by Harvard University Press. Insights from the book suggest that New York should not upend more than one hundred years of established privacy law in the state, nor jeopardize its citizens’ ownership over their own names, likenesses, and voices by replacing these privacy laws with a new and independent …

An Intentional Tort Theory Of Patents, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the dogma of U.S. patent law that direct infringement is a strict liability tort. Impermissibly practicing a patented invention does create liability even if the infringer did not intend to infringe or know about the patent. The consensus is that this is a form of strict liability. The flaw in the consensus is that it proves too little, for the same is true of intentional torts: intent to commit the tort is unnecessary, and ignorance of the legal right is no excuse. What is relevant is intent to perform the action that the law deems tortious. So …

Copyright And Tort As Mirror Models: On Not Mistaking For The Right Hand What The Left Hand Is Doing, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Identity Property: Protecting The New Ip In A Race-Relevant World, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This Article explores the relatively new idea in American legal thought that people of color are human beings whose dignity and selfhood are worthy of legal protection. While the value and protection of whiteness throughout American legal history is undeniable, non-whiteness has had a more turbulent history. For most of American history, the concept of non-whiteness was constructed by white society and reinforced by law—i.e., through a process of socio-legal construction—in a way that excluded its possessor from the fruits of citizenship. However, people of color have resisted this negative construction of selfhood. This resistance led to the development …

The Inalienable Right Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the right of publicity is universally and uncontroversially alienable. Courts and scholars have routinely described the right as a freely transferable property right, akin to patents or copyrights. Despite such broad claims of unfettered alienability, courts have limited the transferability of publicity rights in a variety of instances. No one has developed a robust account of why such limits should exist or what their contours should be. This article remedies this omission and concludes that the right of publicity must have significantly limited alienability to protect the rights of individuals to control the …

The God Paradox, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Trespass-Copyright Parallels And The Harm-Benefit Distinction, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Currently, the elements of a plaintiff’s cause of action for copyright largely follow the tort of trespass to land in that volitional entry (for land) or volitional copying (for copyright) gives rise to liability regardless of proof of harm and without any need for the plaintiff to prove the defendant acted unreasonably. Many scholars have criticized copyright law for following the strict liability model of real property trespass, and have suggested alternatives that would more resemble conditional causes of action such as unfair competition, nuisance, or negligence. In Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, Professor Shyamkrishna Balganesh argues that copyright plaintiffs …

Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets And The Federal Tort Claims Act/Dd Form 882 Over Substance: Caveat Forfeiture, Katherine E. White

Law Faculty Research Publications

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 …

Coverage For Unfair Competition Torts Under General Liability Policies: Will The "Intellectual Property" Tail Wag The Coverage Dog?, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

The scope of "advertising injury" coverage in general liability policies has been shrinking in response to the proliferation of liabilities caused by the growth of the cyber-economy. In response to this shrinking coverage under general liability policies, insurers have been quick to develop new endorsements and specialized products to fill the gaps in coverage. The author argues that significant commercial risks relating to unfair competition claims have been eliminated from coverage under general liability policies, but that there also appears to be no corresponding development of specific endorsements or stand-alone products to deal with this gap in coverage. Specifically, claims …

The Restatement's Rejection Of The Misappropriation Tort, Gary Myers

Faculty Publications

Some legal theories, like the proverbial vampire, refuse to die. The common law tort of misappropriation is one such legal theory, and the recent Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition (Restatement) may finally lead to the demise of this outdated cause of action. Misappropriation began advisedly enough as a means of protecting certain intellectual property rights from unjust usurpation, often by direct competitors employing improper means. Arising before comprehensive copyright, patent, and trademark laws were fully developed, the tort may have played an important role in protecting intangible proprietary interests.The tort's high water mark was the 1918 Supreme Court decision in …

Of Harms And Benefits: Torts, Restitution, And Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright and patent take the form of ordinary property. As tangible property has physical edges, intellectual property statutes create boundaries by defining the subject matters within their zone of protection. As real property owners have rights to prevent strangers from entering their land, intellectual property statutes and case law grant owners rights to exclude strangers from using the protected work in specified ways. As tangible property can be bought and sold, bequeathed and inherited, so can copyrights and patents.