Law Commons^™

Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …

The Sharing Stick In The Property Rights Bundle: The Case Of Short Term Rentals & Hoas, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Pride & Property: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of Their Symbiotic Relationship, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Intellectual Property Rights And The Ppsa: Challenges For Interest Holders, Creditors And Practitioners, Francina Cantatore

Francina Cantatore

The Australian Personal Property Securities Act (PPSA) has made significant inroads into traditional norms of dealing with intellectual property (IP) ownership and rights since its introduction in January 2012, the transitional period of two years having ended on 31 January 2014.Registration requirements under the PPSA have significantly affected a range of commercial transactions dealing with personal property, including the interests of lessors and lessees, consignors and consignees, sellers and buyers, licensors and licensees, and lenders and borrowers. This article considers how IP is treated under the PPSA, and how owners and disseminators of IP (and the practitioners who advise them) …

Intellectual Property Rights And The Ppsa: Challenges For Interest Holders, Creditors And Practitioners, Francina Cantatore

Francina Cantatore

The Australian Personal Property Securities Act (PPSA) has made significant inroads into traditional norms of dealing with intellectual property (IP) ownership and rights since its introduction in January 2012, the transitional period of two years having ended on 31 January 2014.Registration requirements under the PPSA have significantly affected a range of commercial transactions dealing with personal property, including the interests of lessors and lessees, consignors and consignees, sellers and buyers, licensors and licensees, and lenders and borrowers. This article considers how IP is treated under the PPSA, and how owners and disseminators of IP (and the practitioners who advise them) …

What Notice Did, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

In this article, I explore the effect of the copyright notice prerequisite on the law's treatment of copyright ownership. The notice prerequisite, as construed by the courts, encouraged the development of legal doctrines that herded the ownership of copyrights into the hands of publishers and other intermediaries, notwithstanding statutory provisions that seem to have been designed at least in part to enable authors to keep their copyrights. Because copyright law required notice, other doctrinal developments were shaped by and distorted by that requirement. The promiscuous alienability of U.S. copyrights may itself have been an accidental development deriving from courts' constructions …

Europe's Thirteenth Directive And U.S. Takeover Regulation: Regulatory Means And Political Economic Ends, Marco Ventoruzzo

Marco Ventoruzzo

Cross-border acquisitions, especially through hostile takeovers, represent one of the most dramatic consequences of the growing integration, both within Europe, and when considering the economic balance of power between the US and the European industries. This Article focuses on the single most important piece of legislation on European takeover law, the Thirteenth Directive of the European Union on Takeover Regulation, which was approved on April, 21 2004 and must be implemented by Member States before the end of 2006. Passage of the Thirteenth Directive is no minor event. Earlier versions were embroiled in arresting political controversies that generated significant Member …

General Rules For Contract Deviation For Sale Ownership, Mohamad Ali Ali Yousefkhani Mr

Mohamad Ali Ali Yousefkhani

Abstract Sale submission to vendor and price payment by buyer generally shows just the explicit and implied will of both parties and their loyalty to their own legal commitments. For that reason, chronological ownership comes to be true in private contacts, in which vendor holding the completely discretionary by sending the object of sale by post, third party or his legal representative, provides buyer with complete discretionary for the object. For this reason, contract holds the ownership face when sale really submitted to the buyer and vender pays the price completely. When the whole object contract matters, vendor has the …

The Philosophical, Ethical, And Legal Challenges Toward Biopolitics On The Commercializing Human Body Parts, Jongho Kim

Jongho Kim

Medical science has progressed to the point where doctors will soon be able to transplant any human organ. This advancement will have the potential to change attitudes toward human life and the human body – human life can be revitalized and the human body commercialized. Paradoxically, distinguishing between life and death has become harder in a high-tech medical society than it was in primitive society. We now say that the line between death and life should be drawn according to scientific criteria. Death is no longer a natural phenomenon; for modern human beings, it is now no more than an …

Mindful Use: Gandhi's Non-Possessive Property Theory, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION 2

II. ANASAKTIYOGA AND APARIGRAHA IN PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE 4

III. SARVODAYA AND SWADESHI 9

IV. GANDHI’S THEORY OF TRUSTEESHIP AND THEORY OF RIGHTS 15

V. PROPERTY LAW AS PEACE: INTEGRATING GANDHI’S CORE CONCEPTS 21

Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca

Ryan G. Vacca

Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on …

Intellectual Property Rights And The Ppsa: Challenges For Interest Holders, Creditors And Practitioners, Francina Cantatore

Francina Cantatore

The Australian Personal Property Securities Act (PPSA) has made significant inroads into traditional norms of dealing with intellectual property (IP) ownership and rights since its introduction in January 2012, the transitional period of two years having ended on 31 January 2014.Registration requirements under the PPSA have significantly affected a range of commercial transactions dealing with personal property, including the interests of lessors and lessees, consignors and consignees, sellers and buyers, licensors and licensees, and lenders and borrowers. This article considers how IP is treated under the PPSA, and how owners and disseminators of IP (and the practitioners who advise them) …

Keepings, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Ownership And Obligations: The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, Gregory Alexander

Gregory S Alexander

Private property ordinarily triggers notions of individual rights, not social obligations. The core image of property rights, in the minds of most people, is that the owner has a right to exclude others and owes no further obligation to them. That image is highly misleading. Property owners owe far more responsibilities to others, both owners and non-owners, than the conventional imagery of property rights suggests. Property rights are inherently relational, and because of this characteristic, owners necessarily owe obligations to others. But the responsibility, or obligation, dimension of private ownership has been sorely under-theorised. Inherent in the concept of ownership …

The Illusory Right To Abandon, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Eduardo M. Peñalver

The unilateral and unqualified nature of the right to abandon (at least as it is usually described) appears to make it a robust example of the law’s concern to safeguard the individual autonomy interests that many contemporary commentators have identified as lying at the heart of the concept of private ownership. The doctrine supposedly empowers owners of chattels freely and unilaterally to abandon them by manifesting the clear intent to do so, typically by renouncing possession of the object in a way that communicates the intent to forgo any future claim to it. A complication immediately arises, however, due to …

On Trust And Transubstantiation: Mitigating The Excesses Of Ownership, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

The legal institution of trust gives rise to two basic sets of question. The first set concerns the respective rights held by the trustee and the beneficiary with respect to the trust property — do these rights feature a structure characteristic of property, contract, or something in between. The second concerns the normative relationship between the trustee and the beneficiary themselves — what explains the existence and content of the obligations owed by the trustee to the beneficiary, especially the fiduciary duty of loyalty, according to which the trustee is expected to act in the sole, rather than merely the …

Private Ownership And The Standing To Say So, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

Property theory is an ongoing discourse attempting to articulate a compelling answer (or answers) to the following question: what is the single most significant or otherwise interesting thing about the concept of private ownership? In this article, I seek to advance three general claims in response to this question. First, I criticize certain leading attempts to answer this question. Second, the centerpiece of my article defends the claim that an adequate theory of the concept of private ownership must begin with the special standing that an owner possesses, which is to say the standing to demand that others will take …

Men And Things: The Liberal Bias Against Property, Thomas L. Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Shareholder Ownership And Primacy, Julian Velasco

Julian Velasco

According to the traditional view, the shareholders own the corporation. Until relatively recently, this view enjoyed general acceptance. Today, however, there seems to be substantial agreement among legal scholars and others in the academy that shareholders do not own corporations. In fact, the claim that shareholders do own corporations often is dismissed as merely a “theory,” a “naked assertion,” or even a “myth.” And yet, outside of the academy, views on the corporation remain quite traditional. Most people - not just the public and the media, but also politicians, and even bureaucrats and the courts - seem to believe that …

The Property Platform In Anglo-American Law And The Primacy Of The Property Concept, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article proposes that the property concept, when reduced to its basic principles, is a foundational element and a useful lens for evaluating and understanding the whole of Anglo-American private law even though the discrete disciplines—property, tort, and contract—have their own separate and distinct existence. In this Article, a broad property concept is not focused just on things or on sticks related to things but instead is defined as relating to all things owned. These things may include one’s self and all the key elements associated with this broader set of things owned—including the right to exclude, ownership, dominion, authority, …

An Elegy For Greg Ham: Copyright Law, The Kookaburra Case, And Remix Culture, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

The ‘Kookaburra’ case was a tragic and controversial copyright dispute, highlighting the need for copyright law reform by the Australian Parliament. In the Kookaburra case, a copyright action was brought by Larrikin Records against Men at Work’s song ‘Down Under’, alleging copyright infringement of the ‘Kookaburra’ song composed by Marion Sinclair. The dispute raised a host of doctrinal matters. There was disquiet over the length of the copyright term. There were fierce contests as to the copyright ownership of the ‘Kookaburra’ song. The litigation raised questions about copyright infringement and substantiality – particularly in relation to musical works. The ‘Kookaburra’ …

Stewardship And Dominium: How Disparate Conceptions Of Ownership Influence Possession Doctrines, Martin Hirschprung

martin hirschprung

The law is ambiguous regarding the level and extent of possession necessary to effect ownership. It can be argued that one’s conception of the nature of ownership influences this standard of possession. I further argue that the application of the concept of stewardship to questions of possession will aid in resolving the disputes between museums and indigenous groups regarding cultural artifacts. In order to demonstrate the relationship between one’s conception of ownership and its attendant standard of possession, it is useful to contrast different legal definitions of ownership, particularly the Roman concept of dominium, with a religious model of stewardship …

Does The Federal Government Own The Pore Space Under Private Lands In The West? Implications Of The Stock-Raising Homestead Act Of 1916 For Geologic Storage Of Carbon Dioxide, Kevin L. Doran, Angela Cifor

Kevin L Doran

This paper establishes that pursuant to the mineral reservation contained in the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 (SRHA), as well as U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence that has further defined the scope of that reservation, the federal government likely holds title to some 70 million acres of subsurface pore space located under private land in the West. In addressing the issue of pore space ownership, scholars and regulators have focused on the question of who owns the pore space when the mineral estate has been severed from the surface estate. This approach, however, overlooks the critical fact that for the approximately …

The Normativity Of The Private Ownership Form, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

One of the most acute charges against private property observes that ownership generates a trespassory duty of exclusion that far exceeds the requirements of a commitment to values such as freedom and well‐being, and accordingly there exists an analytical mismatch between the form of protecting ownership and the functions that this protection may serve. This article develops a novel account of ownership's normativity, maintaining that, apart from the functions it may render to external values, the form of ownership is in itself a source of value, in virtue of the society it may engender between free and equal persons. Any …

Professional And Academic Employee Inventions: Looking Beyond The Uk Paradigm, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

The vast majority of inventions are devised by employees, raising the question who is entitled to patent them? Under the UK Patents Act 1977, the right to patent an invention lies primarily with its inventor(s). However, an exception exists for employee inventions to which section 39(1) applies. The recent decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia in UWA v Gray raises the question of the applicability of this provision in the university context, in respect of regular academic employees. In that case, the Court relied on UK authorities to support its conclusion that the University of …

‘Sewing The Fly Buttons On The Statute:’ Employee Inventions And The Employment Context, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

Section 39(1) of the Patents Act 1977 governs the ownership of inventions devised by employees in the course of their employment. Introduced ‘to codify in a few lines the accumulated common law experience’ prior to 1977, it does not expressly differentiate between employment fields, and has been widely assumed to apply indiscriminately, without regard to the particular context of employment. The purpose of this article is to revisit that assumption. In the argument made, section 39(1) was built around a private sector paradigm the courts’ departure from which is supported by a ‘rational reason’ in the Shanks v Unilever plc …

Serious Flaw Of Employee Invention Ownership Under The Bayh-Dole Act In Stanford V. Roche: Finding The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle In The German Employee Invention Act, Toshiko Takenaka Prof.

Toshiko Takenaka Prof.

In Stanford v. Roche, the Supreme Court highlighted a serious flaw of employee invention ownership under the Bayh-Dole Act (BDA). This article argues that the current BDA is incomplete without a mechanism for contractors to secure the ownership of all federally funded inventions and proposes a revision to introduce such a mechanism from the German Employee Invention Act (EIA). Because the EIA influenced the drafting of the BDA, the EIA and BDA share key features, which make it easy for the BDA to adopt an ownership transfer mechanism from the EIA. This article also proposes to adopt a mechanism to …

Property And Collective Undertaking: The Principle Of Numerus Clausus, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

Property rights are subject to the principle of numerus clausus, which is a restriction that means that it cannot be up to the contracting parties - or private persons, more generally - to create new forms of property right, but only to trade rights that take existing forms. What can explain this peculiar limitation? All the answers offered so far by property theorists have marshaled functional explanations either in favor of or against the numerus clausus principle (hereinafter: NC). In this paper I shall set out to articulate a novel explanation of this principle. My argument develops two general claims. …

From Music Tracks To Google Maps: Who Owns Computer-Generated Works?, Mark Perry, Thomas Margoni

Mark Perry

Increasingly the digital content used in everyday life has little or no human intervention in its creation. Typically, when such content is delivered to consumers it comes with attached claims of copyright. However, depending on the jurisdiction, approaches to ownership of computer-generated works vary from legislated to uncertain. In this paper we look at the various approaches taken by the common law, such as in Canada, and the legislative approach taken in the United Kingdom. The options for how computer-generated works may be treated and suggestions for their best placement in copyright are discussed.