Law Commons^™

Op-Ed: Don’T Stop At Sopa, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Op-ed in Slate.com by Mark McKenna. SOPA and PIPA are (almost) dead? Now can we talk about the law that already exists?

"Kohler Co. Steamed Over Arizona Firm’S Name Salon School Makes Change To Avoid Trademark Suit" (Quotes: Mark P. Mckenna) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Kohler Co. steamed over Arizona firm’s name Salon school makes change to avoid trademark suit by Rick Romell of the Journal Sentinel quotes Mark P. McKenna in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Jan. 24, 2012.

People have no hard and fast right to use their name on their business if someone else already has trademarked it, said Durst and two academic experts - Mark McKenna of the University of Notre Dame Law School and J. Thomas McCarthy, senior professor at the University of San Francisco.

McKenna, however, called Kohler Co.'s assertions "a pretty aggressive use of their trademark rights."

He said …

Court: Reselling Books Bought Abroad Isn't A Copyright Violation - (Quotes: Mark Mckenna), Npr’S Morning Edition, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Court: Reselling Books Bought Abroad Isn't A Copyright Violation interview by Dan Bobkoff quotes Mark McKenna, NPR’s Morning Edition March 20, 2013 DAN BOBKOFF, BYLINE: Once you buy a book in the U.S., you're free to lend it, throw it away or sell it. This is called the First Sale Doctrine, says law professor Mark McKenna of Notre Dame. MARK MCKENNA: This is why there are used book stores. BOBKOFF: But the question at stake in this case was whether that still applies to products sold and made in another country. Grad student Supap(ph) Kirksang(ph) made tens of thousands of …

Mark Mckenna Quoted In Usa Today Article Apple Gets $290m In Samsung Patent Dispute, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Mark McKenna was quoted in the USA Today article Apple gets $290 million in Samsung patent dispute by Scott Martin. "Today's damage award was much larger than Samsung had argued for, but still significantly less than the $400 million vacated by Judge Koh after the first trial," said Mark McKenna, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Trademark Law's Faux Federalism, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Federal and state trademark laws regulate concurrently: The Lanham Act does not preempt state law, and in fact many states have statutorily and/or judicially developed trademark or unfair competition laws of their own. This state of affairs, which is now well-accepted even if it has not always been uncontroversial, distinguishes trademark law from patent and copyright law, since federal patent and copyright statutes preempt state law much more broadly. The Patent Act entirely preempts state law with respect to non-secret inventions and the 1976 Copyright Act preempts state copyright law with respect to all works fixed in a tangible medium …

What's The Frequency, Kenneth? Channeling Doctrines In Trademark Law, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

This paper was published as a chapter in Intellectual Property and Information Wealth (Peter Yu, ed., Praeger 2007). The chapter describes several doctrines that courts have developed to limit the scope of trademark protection where there is a risk of interference with the patent or copyright schemes. It also suggests that courts have in some cases overemphasized the subject matter of protection and underemphasized parties' ability to use trademark law to capture the types of economic benefits for which patent and copyright protection are presumed necessary.

Copyrights... And Wrongs, Sarah Wiant

Sarah K. Wiant

No abstract provided.

The Next Great Copyright Acts: A Global Analysis Of Current Legislative And Industry Developments And Proposed Solutions For Our Modern Digital Environment, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Open Access Interview With Michael W. Carroll, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Copyright In An Era Of Information Overload: Toward The Privileging Of Categorizers, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Environmental laws are designed to reduce negative externalities (such as pollution) that harm the natural environment. Copyright law should adjust the rights of content creators in order to compensate for the ways they reduce the usefulness of the information environment as a whole. Every new work created contributes to the store of expression, but also makes it more difficult to find whatever work one wants. Such search costs have been well-documented in information economics. Copyright law should take information overload externalities like search costs into account in its treatment of alleged copyright infringers whose work merely attempts to index, organize, …

Global Warming Trend? The Creeping Indulgence Of Fair Use In International Copyright Law, Richard Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

In her article Toward an International Fair Use Doctrine in 2000, Professor Ruth Okediji hypothesized that the internationalization of copyright law would threaten the freedom of expression if some doctrine akin to U.S. “fair use” were not established as an international legal norm. Acknowledging the central concern of the Okediji article, this paper analyzes research and legal developments since that article to determine how the present state of the “fair use” concept in international copyright law differs from its state in 2000. The paper concludes that in the last eight years, though there has been no formal adoption of an …

Increased Market Power As A New Secondary Consideration In Patent Law, Andrew Blair-Stanek

Andrew Blair-Stanek

Courts have developed nine non-technical secondary considerations to help juries and judges in patent litigation decide whether a patent meets the crucial statutory requirement of being non-obvious. This article proposes a new, tenth secondary consideration: increased market power. If a patent measurably increases its holders’ market power, that should weigh in favor of finding the patent non-obvious. This new secondary consideration incorporates the predictive benefits of several existing secondary considerations, while increasing the accuracy and availability of evidence for fact-finders to determine whether a patent is non-obvious.

Profits As Commercial Success, Andrew Blair-Stanek

Andrew Blair-Stanek

Courts often use the extent of a patented invention’s commercial success as crucial nontechnical proof of the patent’s validity. Relying on misguided economic reasoning, most courts use revenue as the primary yardstick for commercial success. This Note argues that courts instead should use profits as the proper measure of an invention’s commercial success. Current jurisprudence’s use of revenue reflects the flawed premise that firms maximize revenues rather than maximizing profits. As a result, courts will often find commercial success when the financial data suggest otherwise and vice versa. This Note finds the accounting and economic issues involved to be insubstantial, …

Isp Liability Under U.S. Copyright Law, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Withdrawal Of The Reference: Rights, Rules, And Remedies For Unwelcomed Web-Linking, Walter Effross

Walter Effross

No abstract provided.

Copyright-Exempt Nonprofits: A Simple Proposal To Spur Innovation, Edward Lee

Edward Lee

New types of social networks have recently emerged that have facilitated the growth of a different kind of user-generated content: curation. The user finds various content from the Internet and then organizes or “curates” the content in a social network platform in a way that better serves the user’s purpose. For example, on Pinterest, users can “pin” content from the web onto their virtual “pinboards” that have topical categories of the users’ choice. The content typically involves a photograph (in reduced size) from the original web page that is then displayed on the user’s pinboard. Clicking on the photograph displays …

The Fight For The Future: How People Defeated Hollywood And Saved The Internet—For Now, Edward Lee

Edward Lee

No abstract provided.

Plant Variety Protection In Thailand: The Need For A New Coherent Framework, Pawarit Lertdhamtewe

Pawarit Lertdhamtewe

Thailand's plant protection regime, currently represented by the Plant Variety Protection Act (‘PVPA’), represents a sui generis plant protection system, which several developing nations use as a model to enact their plant protection laws. It is currently uncertain whether the PVPA serves the needs of all actors in agricultural management in Thailand; this uncertainty may dilute the benefits of Thailand's plant protection regime. In view of concerns regarding the adequacy of the legal framework for plant variety protection, this article argues that greater certainty must be provided to ensure the effective protection of plant varieties, the validity of national legislation …

The New Public Domain, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu