Law Commons^™

Fair Use In Oracle: Proximate Cause At The Copyright/Patent Divide, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC, the Federal Circuit undermined copyright law’s deference to patent law and, in doing so, delivered a blow to both regimes. Copyright’s deference— including a historic refusal to enforce rights that might undermine the public’s liberty to copy unpatented inventions-- is a necessary part of preserving inventors’ willingness to accept the short duration, mandatory disclosure, and other stringent bargains demanded by patent law. Deference to patent law is also integral to copyright law’s interior architecture; copyright’s refusal to monopolize functional applications of creative work lowers the social costs that would otherwise be imposed by …

Draft Of Fair Use In Oracle: Proximate Cause At The Copyright/Patent Divide - 2019, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This Paper was presented at the conference, "A Celebration of the Work of Wendy Gordon," at Boston University school of law on June 14, 2019. In presented an earlier draft under the title, Transformative Use, Proximate Cause, and Copyright, at the University of Texas at Austin on March 23, 2017. Under the title, Inegrating Judge Legal's Theory of Fair Use into on Economic View of Copyright Law: From "proximate Cause" to "Transormative Use," the paper was also presented at the March, 2016, "Conference on IP and Private Law," held at Harvard Law School. I am grateful to …

Time Is Money: An Empirical Assessment Of Non-Economic Damages Arguments, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

Non-economic damages (pain and suffering) are the most significant and variable components of liability. Our survey of 51 U.S. jurisdictions shows wide heterogeneity in whether attorneys may quantify damages as time-units of suffering (“per diem”) or demand a specific amount (“lump sum”). Either sort of large number could exploit an irrational anchoring effect.

We performed a realistic online, video-based experiment with 732 human subjects. We replicate prior work showing that large lump sum demands drive larger jury verdicts, but surprisingly find no effect of similarly-sized per diem anchors. We do find per diem effects on binary liability outcomes, and thus …

Draft Of The Concept Of "Harm" In Copyright - 2013, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This essay examines the tort of copyright infringement. It argues that the ideas of "harm" and "fault" already play a role in the tort’s functioning, and that an ideally reformulated version of the tort should perhaps give a more significant role to “harm.” The essay therefore examines what “harm” can or should mean, reviewing four candidates for cognizable harm in copyright law (rivalry-based losses, foregone fees, loss of exclusivity, and subjective distress) and canvassing three philosophical conceptions of “harm” (counterfactual, historical-worsening, and noncomparative). The essay identifies the appropriateness vel non of employing, in the copyright context, each harm-candidate and each …

Notes On Borrowing And Convergence, Robert L. Tsai, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

This is a response to Jennifer E. Laurin, "Trawling for Herring: Lessons in Doctrinal Borrowing and Convergence," 111 Colum. L. Rev. 670 (2011), which analyzes the Supreme Court's resort to tort-based concepts to limit the reach of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule. We press three points. First, there are differences between a general and specific critique of constitutional borrowing. Second, the idea of convergence as a distinct phenomenon from borrowing has explanatory potential and should be further explored. Third, to the extent convergence occurs, it matters whether concerns of judicial administration or political reconstruction are driving doctrinal changes.

The Supreme Court's Assault On Litigation: Why (And How) It Could Be Good For Health Law, Abigail Moncrieff

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the Supreme Court has narrowed or eliminated private rights of action in many legal regimes, much to the chagrin of the legal academy. That trend has had a significant impact on health law; the Court’s decisions have eliminated the private enforcement mechanism for at least four important healthcare regimes: Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance, and medical devices. In a similar trend outside the courts, state legislatures have capped noneconomic and punitive damages for medical malpractice litigation, weakening the tort system’s deterrent capacity in those states. This Article points out that the trend of eliminating private rights of action in …

Torts And Choice Of Law: Searching For Principles, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

If a tortious act (e.g., negligently firing a rifle) occurs in state X and the harm (e.g., killing a bystander) occurs in state Y, which state's law should apply? This is a simple example of the choice of law problem in torts. The problem arises between states or provinces with different laws within one nation and between different nations. In this article I discuss this problem largely in terms of incentive effects and also consider where this topic might be addressed in a torts course.

A Restatement (Third) Of Intentional Torts?, Kenneth Simons

Faculty Scholarship

Some intentional tort doctrines have developed in intriguing ways since the Restatement Second was published, and other doctrines remain contentious or obscure. For example, disagreement persists about whether the tort of battery requires merely the (single) intent to make a nonconsensual contact, or the (dual) intent both (1) to contact and (2) either to harm or to offend. The single intent view is much more plausible; the dual intent view cannot make much sense of the liability of well-intentioned doctors for battery if they exceed the patient's consent, or the liability of pranksters, or the well-accepted doctrine of apparent consent. …

Common Law Disclosure Duties And The Sin Of Omission: Testing The Meta-Theories, Kimberly Krawiec, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

Since ancient times, legal scholars have explored the vexing question of when and what a contracting party must disclose to her counterparty, even in the absence of explicit misleading statements. This fascination has culminated in a set of claims regarding which factors drive courts to impose disclosure duties on informed parties. Most of these claims are based on analysis of a small number of non-randomly selected cases and have not been tested systematically. This article represents the first attempt to systematically test a number of these claims using data coded from 466 case decisions spanning over a wide array of …

Render Copyright Unto Caesar: On Taking Incentives Seriously, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests we bifurcate our thinking. Conventional copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Much recent scholarship contains dramatic suggestions to secure a freedom to be creative, rewrite, and be imaginative. My work has long sought to defend such freedoms, but I believe we understand imagination and its conditions too little to employ it as a starting point. I suggest instead that we acquire a better conceptual map of the generative process and …

Footnote Draft Of Render Copyright Unto Caesar - 2004, Wendy J. Gordon

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This essay, however, does not press any particular agenda; rather, it tries to make our thinking about the topic more flexible. It is my hope that some conduct-specific rule as was adopted in the defamation context will eventually be adopted for intellectual property. Copyright law cannot continue forever closing its eyes and hoping its house will stop being haunted.

Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This article makes a simple suggestion. Copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Copyright. When new artists make transformative use of existing works in settings not characterized by pre-use commercial negotiations, copyright should avoid imposing a distorting burden.

Copyright As Tort Law's Mirror Image: 'Harms', 'Benefits', And The Uses And Limits Of Analogy, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This pair of papers involves a reprinting of "Of Harms and Benefits: Torts, Restitution, and Intellectual Property," 21 J. LEGAL STUDIES 449 (1992), along with an introduction to that article for students, entitled "Copyright as Tort's Mirror Image". Both involve comparisons between statutory intellectual property law and common law doctrines.

"Copyright as Tort's Mirror" uses personal injury law to introduce students to copyright, making a link between the doctrines through the notion of "externalities". Just as tort law discourages wastefully harmful behavior by making perpetrators bear some of the costs inflicted, copyright law encourages beneficial behavior by enabling authors to …

Notes On Dissemination: The Prop/Tort Distinction - 2002, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Most of the proviso-based reasons for restricting property rights come into play after dissemination.[1] Is there any other way in which dissemination matters? Yes; the point of dissemination demarks a crucial shift in the Kind of legal protection that must be given- and thus the Kind of institutional decisions that must be made- if the creator is to be protected.

The Distinction Between Crime And Tort In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers and judges in English royal courts between 1200 and 1500 drew a distinction between crime and tort. Each type of lawsuit-each writ or action-had its own form and nature. Medieval English lawyers grouped these individual actions into categories such as real actions and personal actions, writs of possession and writs of right.' The lawyers recognized categories that later acquired the labels crime and tort, although those were not the names for them in the early common law. Crimes were prosecuted by actions known as indictments and appeals of felony. Torts were remedied by writs of trespass alleging use of …

Comment On The Tort/Crime Distinction: A Generation Later, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Professor Epstein has used the occasion of this Symposium to again voice his disapproval of the modern regulatory state.' Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with the bald assertions and assumptions he makes concerning that issue. In my view, compelling reasons justify the kinds of environmental and, at least in the absence of pervasive independent employee collective representation at the work place, worker safety laws attacked by Professor Epstein.² However, I will refrain from compounding the diversion by engaging Professor Epstein on these normative issues.

Instead, I will …

Symposium Draft For Tragic Choices In Everyday Life - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

In the age of high technology, ordinary life situations often demand tragic choices: kidney dialysis, new pesticides, and even simple legal contracts can pose excruciating choices for people from all walks of life and inescapable dangers for innocent victims. This human dilemma-facing a world in which some innocents will die- is paralleled by the central Christian mythos of a willing crucifixion. Law and myth help us clarify the human situation.

Letter To Bruce Ackerman, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

I shall be heading back to Rutgers for classes shortly, and I'm sending you a draft of the "Copyright and Copy-privilege" piece in the hope of receiving some additional comments before I enter into the final "polishing" stages later this month. As you know from my last note, the suggestions you made have proved extremely useful -- the title is the least of it. Among other things, your suggestions for reorganization led, indirectly, to a way of unifying the piece on copyright and contract with another piece I've been working on, regarding copyright and tort. I'm very pleased with the …

Draft Of The Constitutionalization Of Intentional Torts - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

The Supreme Court has often faced the question of whether an individual who alleges that he has been injured by a state or local official or by a local governmental entity, can bring a constitutional tort action under section 1983 when state doctrines of sovereign or official immunity would make it impossible for the individual to prosecute an ordinary tort suit in the relevant state court. The Court has consistently held that when an official violates a substantive provision of the Constitution, only an immunity that is consistent with the purpose of section 1983 and the Consitution can be tolerated.

Note On General Conclusion - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

The burden of the first part of this paper has been to suggest that tort law provides us no self-justifying notion of "wrongs" by which we can allocate rights and duties. The burden of the second part of this paper has been to suggest that contract law's notion of "consent" is similarly unable to provide justification for any particular system of rights. How would one go about constructing a theory by which to evaluate whether a given property system could be justified? A full answer to that question is surely outside the scope of this paper, but some basic points …

Note On Re Article On Definition Of Tort/Property - 1986, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Some distinctions in the law are fairly clear. For example, we seem to think that bad actions deserve to be punished, actions which are not personally blameworthy should not be punished, and that injuries to innocent persons should be compensated. But there are many instances in which these two goals cannot be simultaneously served. There we partially separate them, placing each in its own primary area of law. For those instances in which a bad action occurs and no one is injured, the criminal law has a remedy (the law of attempts). For those instances in which an innocent party …

Outline Of Green Bound - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

No abstract provided.

Conversation With Whit Gray - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Whit Gray argued that even for things most of us would feel comfy saying AREN'T property, like the "idea" of shopping malls, we wouldn't feel so comfy with copying if the blueprints for the idea were copied prior to the time they became public. He argues also, that something more than "privacy" is at issue in our anger at visualizing such an intrusive prepublication copying.

Note On Individualized V Particularized Entitlement Inquiries - 1984, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

My analysis now looks something like this: Some entitlements should be "prima facie" protectible from invasion. That means that there are some entitlements which the owner should be able to protect even if he or she is unable to prove (a) that protection is in the net social interest or (b) that the invader's action is deserving of punishment. I would call these entitlements "property".