Law Commons^™

Thinking Outside The Box: The Challenge Of Maine's Regional Service Centers, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

The challenges facing regional service center communities in Maine need to be addressed by creative problem solving which goes beyond the simplistic and flawed assumptions of the "Closed Loop" model of service center revenue. Many existing strategies to increase municipal revenue through tax incentives and inappropriate economic development are often counterproductive to the long-term well-being of service center communities and their quality of life. The health of RSC's is critically important for the well-being of the state as a whole, and the taxpayers in these communities should not be expected to assume the entire financial burden of providing needed services …

Adequacy Of The 1995 Antitrust Guidelines For The Licensing Of Intellectual Property In Complex High Tech Markets, Clovia Hamilton

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

In 1995, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission adopted new guidelines for those wishing to license intellectual property rights without violating antitrust laws. Designed to provide clarity, these guidelines instead breed confusion because they misunderstand the nature of intellectual property markets and provide insufficient guidance in the most difficult areas. Section I of this article will discuss the basic provisions of the guidelines, especially their treatment of "innovation markets." It argues that government enforcers should focus primarily on activity that creates entry barriers. Understanding the use and misuse of licensing is the key to analyzing barriers in …

Academic Freedom In Times Of Turmoil, Petr Kolar

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center of the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University November 5, 2001.

Proposal For A Centralized And Integrated Registry For Security Interests In Intellectual Property, William J. Murphy

Law Faculty Scholarship

As the world economy enters the twenty-first century, job and wealth creation is increasingly based on innovation and creativity that, in turn, can give rise to important intellectual property rights. For many companies and individuals these intellectual property rights may represent their most valuable assets, or in some cases, their only valuable assets. As a result, intellectual property rights increasingly play a critical the role in financing.

Unlocking the job and wealth creating potential of intellectual property assets requires putting these assets into use, and that often requires a capital investment. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs and innovators lack the capital necessary …

Corporate And Products Identity In The Post-National Economy: Rethinking U.S. Trade Laws, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

In the global economy, a General Motors automobile may involve South Korean assembly; Japanese engines; German design and style engineering; Taiwanese, Singaporean, and Japanese small components; British advertising and marketing; and Irish and Barbadian data processing. What is the country of origin of this product? How should U.S. trade laws evaluate a product's origin, if it is a global composite with research, assembly, processing, and manufacturing performed in different countries? Similarly, corporations have become increasingly global in orientation and operations. Even "national" corporations have lost their territorial ties to the state of their nationality. Through a phenomenon termed "global outsourcing" …

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Pill: Adaptive Responses To Takeover Law, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hemispheric Integration And The Politics Of Regionalism: The Free Trade Area Of The Americas (Ftaa), Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

This article examines negotiations toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). It seeks to discern what key negotiating parties want out of such an agreement, and the means through which they have sought to achieve their disparate goals.

The United States and Brazil, in particular, have employed complex negotiating strategies in order to gain theupper hand - strategies prompted by a variety of economic and political dynamics at domestic andsubregional levels. These dynamics include the significant pressure exerted on U.S. policy-makers by constituent groups sensitive to globalization's impact on labor and the environment, as well as the challenge …

Towards An Integrated Theory Of Intellectual Property, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses a curious gap in the theory of intellectual property. One of the central dogmas in both the legal and economic literatures is that patents, copyrights and trademarks constitute separate forms of protection, each serving different purposes and designed to operate independently of the others. By challenging this dogma, however, this Article shows that certain combinations of intellectual property protection give rise to important synergies. When a patentee can develop brand loyalty among its customers, the existence of trademark protection allows her to extend its protection even after her patent expires, and thereby earn higher profits than would …

Commercial Speech And The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine: A Second Look At "The Greater Includes The Lesser", Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Never Trust A Corporation, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Venture Capital On The Downside: Preferred Stock And Corporate Control, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New Basel Capital Accord: Making It Effective With Stronger Market Discipline, Harald Benink, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

In January 2001 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision proposed a new capital adequacy framework to respond to deficiencies in the 1988 Capital Accord on credit risk. The main elements or ‘pillars’ of the proposal are capital requirements based on the internal risk-ratings of individual banks, expanded and active supervision, and information disclosure requirements to enhance market discipline. We discuss the incentive effects of the proposed regulation. In particular, we argue that it provides incentives for banks to develop new ways to evade the intended consequences of the proposed regulation. Supervision alone cannot prevent banks from ‘gaming and manipulation’ of …

The Rule That Isn't A Rule - The Business Judgment Rule, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

On a doctrinal basis, few areas of corporate law are more confused then the duty of care applicable to corporate officials and its handmaiden, the business judgment rule. The tendency of many scholars and practitioners has been to collapse the duty of care into the business judgment rule, as Professor Stuart Cohn pointed out more than a decade ago. The business judgment rule is a separate legal construct that is related to, but separate from, the duty of care and one which protects only proactive and not somnambulant directors and officers. The business judgment rule stays at center stage for …

The Social Responsibility Of Large Multinational Corporations, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

In the 1970s, legal scholars wrote extensively on the subject, as it was then known, "corporate social responsibility." Proposals surfaced for pubic interest directors, mandatory social accounting and disclosure, increased use of Security Exchange Commission (SEC) shareholder proxy proposals, federal minimum debate was eclipsed completely by the law and economics movement of the 1980s. Now, in the new century, the inquiry into social responsibility of large corporations has begun anew. This article is an attempt to take that inquiry, or debate, and place it in the international context.

I have four stories to tell. First is that much of the …

Put-Call Parity And The Law, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

A common literary theme is the conflict between appearance and reality. That conflict also frequently arises in the law, where it is usually cast as one between substance and form. Another discipline in which the conflict arises is finance, where it appears in the put-call parity theorem. That theorem states that given any three of the four following financial instruments--a riskless zero-coupon bond, a share of stock, a call option on the stock, and a put option on the stock--the fourth instrument can be replicated. Thus, the theorem implies that any financial position containing these assets can be constructed in …

Dangerous Liaisons: Corporate Law, Trust Law, And Interdoctrinal Legal Transplants, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering Estoppel: Patent Administration And The Failure Of Festo, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

Last Term, in Festo Corporation v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabashuki Co., the United States Supreme Court missed perhaps the most important opportunity for patent law reform in two decades. At the core of the failure to grasp the implications of "prosecution history estoppel" - a judicially-crafted principle limiting the enforceable scope of patents based on acts occurring during their application process - is the heretofore universal (but ultimately unsupportable) view of the doctrine as an arbitrary ex post limitation on patent scope. This Article demonstrates the serious flaws in this traditionalist approach, and develops a new theory of prosecution history …

Enron And The Dark Side Of Shareholder Value, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Securities Regulation As Lobster Trap: A Credible Commitment Theory Of Mandatory Disclosure, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.