Law Commons^™

Consumer Protection: Inside Copyright Law Or Outside?, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, copyright law's fair use and idea/expression doctrines are "built-in free speech safeguards" that establish a "definitional balance" between copyright and the First Amendment. Yet these "built-in free speech safeguards" are among the most uncertain and ill-defined doctrines in all of copyright law. If we accept the Supreme Court's statement that these doctrines play a critical role as First Amendment safety valves, it follows that the chilling effect of uncertainty in these doctrines has a constitutional dimension. Current copyright law doctrine, however, fails to take into account the potential chilling effect of copyright liability. This …

Chasing 'Enemy Combatants' And Circumventing International Law: A License For Sanctioned Abuse, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court made a major error in judgment. It ruled that the executive may forcibly remove over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and relocate them in American detention camps. In two recent Supreme Court cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court made similar errors in judgment by accepting the administration's term "enemy combatant." The Supreme Court's errors were compounded when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in October, 2006, statutorily defining the term enemy combatant for the first time. By acknowledging the term enemy combatant, the …

Copyright And Breathing Space, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

The Legal Framework Surrounding Digital Rights Management Technologies, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

Liberating Estates Law From The Constraints Of Copyright, Lee-Ford Tritt

Lee-ford Tritt

No abstract provided.

The Sine Qua Non Of Copyright, Deborah Hussey Freeland

Deborah M. Hussey Freeland

The United States Supreme Court treats originality as the sine qua non of copyright. How can this abstract quality best be recognized under the law, particularly in the difficult case of multiply produced works? This article grapples with controverted definitions of "original" and "copy," analyzing the positions and interests of various players in the art world with respect to what should count as an original work. Using the case of bronze sculptures that various parties seek to attribute to Auguste Rodin and discussing their status under national and international laws, this article identifies and calls for these laws to converge …

Regulatory Copyright, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

The Dmca And The Regulation Of Scientific Research, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article analyzes the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on academic encryption research. In this Article, I argue that for both legal and practical reasons academic encryption researchers should be able to conduct and publish certain types of research without significant fear of liability under the DMCA. However, the DMCA will have a non-trivial impact on the conditions under which such research takes place, and this impact can be expected to have several undesirable effects. More broadly, this impact highlights the problematic way in which the DMCA regulates scientific research in furtherance of intellectual property rights. The …

Patenting Our Lives And Our Genes: Where Does Congress Stand? Public Commet To Ftc Hearing On Competition And Intellectual Property Law And Policy In The Knowledge-Based Economy, Thomas Horton

Thomas J. Horton

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph Liu

Joseph P. Liu

This Article argues that courts should adjust the scope of copyright protection by considering time as a factor in fair use analysis. More specifically, the longer it has been since a copyrighted work was published, the greater the scope of fair use should be. Up to now, most of the debate over the role of time in copyright law has focused on the controversial issue of copyright duration and term extension. By focusing so narrowly on the end of the copyright term, however, this debate has neglected the more significant issue of how time should affect the scope of copyright …

Intellectual Property: General Theories, Peter Menell

Peter Menell

This chapter surveys and synthesizes the deepening and widening theoretical landscape of intellectual property. Not surprisingly, the principal philosophical theory applied to the protection of utilitarian works - that is, technological inventions - has been utilitarianism. Utilitarian theorists generally endorse the creation of intellectual property rights as an appropriate means to foster innovation. Non-utilitarian theorists emphasize creators’ moral rights to control their work. Many of these scholars draw upon multiple philosophical strands in constructing their analyses.