Law Commons^™

Pleasure Patents, Andrew Gilden, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted thousands of patents for inventions whose purpose is to facilitate the sexual pleasure of their users. These "pleasure patents" raise a range of novel questions about both patent theory and the relationship between law and sexuality more broadly. Given that "immoral" inventions were long excluded from the patent system, and that sexual devices were widely criminalized for much of the past 150 years, how have patentees successfully framed the contributions of their sexual inventions? If a patentable invention must be both new and useful, how have patentees described the utility of …

Whose Progress?, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress shall have power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” These words have been the subject of countless books and scholarly articles. Professor Silbey’s engaging contribution [in Against Progress: Intellectual Property Law and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age] to the conversation focuses on one word—progress—and what it should mean as we think about intellectual property law’s motivations and justifications in the twenty-first century.

But even …

Third-Party Interests And The Property Law Misfit In Patent Law, Sarah Rajec

Faculty Publications

Courts and scholars have long parsed the characteristics of patent grants and likened them, alternately, to real or personal property law, monopolies, public franchises and other regulatory grants, or a hybrid of these. The characterizations matter, because they can determine how patents are treated for the purposes of administrative review, limitations, and remedies, inter alia. And these varied treatments in turn affect incentives to innovate. Patents are often likened to real property in an effort to maximize rights and allow inventors to internalize all of the benefits from their activities. And courts often turn first to real property analogies when …

Right On Time: A Reply To Professors Allen, Claeys, Epstein, Gordon, Holbrook, Mossoff, Rose, And Van Houweling, Dotan Oliar, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

A simple observation started us off in writing Right on Time. Studying and teaching intellectual property law, we noticed striking parallels between traditional first possession rules in property law and analagous rules governing the acquisition of patent, copyright, and trademark rights. We thought that established first possession principles could illuminate the workings of IP law. As we dug in, however, it became increasingly clear that our premise wasn’t quite right. While many penetrating commentators had said many penetrating things about first possession, the leading treatments tended to focus on significant individual aspects of the overall issue. What we could …

The Harmonization Myth In International Intellectual Property Law, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

There is a dominant narrative in international intellectual property ("IP") law of ever-increasing harmonization. This narrative has been deployed in ways descriptive, prescriptive, and instrumental: approximating the historical trend, providing justification, and establishing the path forward. Appeals to harmonization are attractive. They evoke a worldwide partnership and shared sacrifice to meet the goals of innovation and access to technology through certainty, efficiency, and increased competition through lowered trade barriers. Countries with strong IP protections consistently and successfully tout the importance of certainty and lower trade barriers when seeking new and stronger protections from countries with lower levels of protection. Yet …

Right On Time: First Possession In Property And Intellectual Property, Dotan Oliar, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

How should we allocate property rights in unowned tangible and intangible resources? This Article develops a model of original acquisition that draws together common law doctrines of first possession with original acquisition doctrines in patent, copyright, and trademark law. The common denominator is time: in each context, doctrine involves a trade-off between assigning entitlements to resources earlier or later in the process of their development and use. Early awards risk granting exclusivity to parties who may not be capable of putting resources to their best use. Late awards prolong contests for ownership, which may generate waste or discourage acquisition efforts …

The Intellectual Property Hostage In Trade Retaliation, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

Intellectual property law has become bound up in a debate about appropriate remedies for violations of the World Trade Organization Agreement. As an alternative to traditional countermeasures that consist of retaliation under the violated agreement, the World Trade Organization ("WTO ") contemplates that violations of one of its covered agreements may be remedied through "cross-retaliation, " or retaliation under another agreement. One form of cross-retaliation has garnered interest in recent years: the threat to suspend intellectual property rights in response to unrelated trade violations

Cross-retaliation through intellectual property rights suspension is theoretically appealing for its potential to avoid problems inherent …

What Is Digital Rights Management?, Frederick W. Dingledy, Alex Berrio Matamoros

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Overlapping Intellectual Property Doctrines: Election Of Rights Versus Selection Of Remedies, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

Overlaps exist across various doctrines in federal intellectual property law. Software can be protected under both copyright law and patent law; logos can be protected under both copyright law and trademark law. Design patents provide a particular opportunity to consider the issue of overlap, as an industrial design that qualifies for design patent protection might also, in particular circumstances, qualify for copyright protection as well as function as protectable trade dress.

When an overlap issue arises—that is, when an intellectual property rights holder asserts rights under more than one doctrine—the question then becomes how courts should respond. One response, of …

Book Review Of Research Handbook On The Protection Of Intellectual Property Under Wto Rules And Research Handbook On The Interpretation And Enforcement Of Intellectual Property Under Wto Rules, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Intellectual Property And Human Development: Current Trends And Future Scenarios, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment's Biggest Threat, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Copyrighting Facts, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Book Review Of Controlling Voices: Intellectual Property, Humanistic Studies, And The Internet", James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Sequencing, Acoustic Separation, And 3-D Negotiation Of Complex Barriers: Charlene Barshefsky And Ip Rights In China, Rebecca Green, James K. Sebenius

Faculty Publications

Taking the perspective of the lead U.S. negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, this article details and analyzes the negotiations that took place in the mid-1990s between the United States and the People's Republic of China over intellectual property rights (IPR). Employing a "negotiation analytic" methodology, Charlene Barshefsky's actions are interpreted to suggest a number of promising approaches to managing the daunting complexities of trade and other negotiations: recognizing the multiparty aspects of apparently bilateral dealings and capturing them in a "deal diagram;" carefully assessing "barriers" to agreement; sequencing to build a winning coalition and overcome potentially blocking ones; "acoustic separation" of issueframes; …

Disease Management And Liability In The Human Genome Era, Larry I. Palmer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Digital Information, Licensing, And The Threat To Fair Use, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Ucita: Still Crazy After All These Years, And Still Not Ready For Prime Time, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Coming Soon To Your State (But Not Ready For Prime Time): Ucita, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ancient Doctrine Of Trespass To Web Sites, I. Trotter Hardy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Newspaper Copyright, Joseph M. Cormack

Faculty Publications

This is a report upon the state of the American law prepared for submission to the International Congress of Comparative Law to be held at The Hague, August 2nd to 6th., 1932. The report was prepared at the request of the American committee of the Interiationad Academy of Comparative Law, and is published with the approval of the Academy. The national reports are to form the basis of a general report, not exceeding xo,ooo words in length, covering the general state of the law in regard to the particular topic. Because of the limitations thus involved, it has been necessary …