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Full-Text Articles in Law
Sequential Musical Creation And Sample Licensing, Peter Dicola
Sequential Musical Creation And Sample Licensing, Peter Dicola
Faculty Working Papers
All musical creation builds on previous works. But using fragments of existing musical works in a new work can often constitute copyright infringement. Copyright law, in cases like Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films (6th Cir. 2005), has recently increased its restrictions on musicians who wish to engage in sampling, defined as the practice of using other creators' sound recordings to create new music. The paper describes a model of copyright holders' and samplers' incentives to create in light of the need to negotiate licenses for sample-based works to avoid violating copyright law. Even in the absence of traditional transaction costs …
Federal Circuit Patent Precedent: An Empirical Study Of Institutional Authority And Ip Ideology, David Pekarek-Krohn, Emerson H. Tiller
Federal Circuit Patent Precedent: An Empirical Study Of Institutional Authority And Ip Ideology, David Pekarek-Krohn, Emerson H. Tiller
Faculty Working Papers
In this paper, we aim to better understand the institutional authority of the Federal Circuit as a source of law as well as the influence of pro-patent and anti-patent ideological forces at play between the Supreme Court, Federal Circuit, and the district courts. Our specific focus is on the district courts and how they cite Federal Circuit precedent relative to Supreme Court precedent to support their decisions, whether they be pro-patent or anti-patent. Using a variety of citation approaches and statistical tests, we find that federal district courts treat the Federal Circuit as more authoritative (compared to the Supreme Court) …
In Defense Of Intellectual Property Anxiety, Aaron K. Perzanowski
In Defense Of Intellectual Property Anxiety, Aaron K. Perzanowski
Faculty Publications
In this Response to Professor Fagundes’s "Property Rhetoric and the Public Domain," Professor Perzanowski expresses skepticism about two assumptions underlying the argument for embracing property rhetoric to promote the public domain. This argument assumes, first, public recognition of social discourse theory as an account of property and, second, rhetorical advantages of social discourse theory that are comparable to those of more familiar notions of private property. Perzanowski concludes that the simple intuitive appeal of Blackstonian property cautions against styling the struggle for balanced copyright and patent policy as a debate over competing property interests.
Fixing Ram Copies, Aaron K. Perzanowski
Fixing Ram Copies, Aaron K. Perzanowski
Faculty Publications
Scholars, litigants, and courts have debated the status of so-called “RAM copies” - instantiations of copyrighted works in the random access memory of computing devices - for decades. The Second Circuit’s decision in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings has recently reignited the controversy over these putative copies. There the court held that CSC did not create copies within the meaning of the Copyright Act when it buffered fleeting segments of television programs. In many respects, the Second Circuit’s holding is a straightforward application of the Act’s nested definitions of “copies” and “fixed.” But because the court declined to apply the …
Bad Faith In Cyberspace: Grounding Domain Name Theory In Trademark, Property And Restitution, Jacqueline D. Lipton
Bad Faith In Cyberspace: Grounding Domain Name Theory In Trademark, Property And Restitution, Jacqueline D. Lipton
Articles
The year 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of domain name regulation under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Adopted to combat cybersquatting, these rules left a confused picture of domain name theory in their wake. Early cybersquatters registered Internet domain names corresponding with others’ trademarks to sell them for a profit. However, this practice was quickly and easily contained. New practices arose in domain name markets, not initially contemplated by the drafters of the ACPA and the UDRP. One example is clickfarming – using domain names to generate revenues from click-on …
Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey
Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This Article argues that the open-source and anti-expansionist rhetoric of current intellectual-property debates is a revolution of surface rhetoric but not of deep structure. What this Article terms “the Access Movements” are, by now, well-known communities devoted to providing more access to intellectual-property-protected goods, communities such as the Open Source Initiative and Access to Knowledge. This Article engages Movement actors in their critique of the balance struck by recent law (statutes and cases) and asks whether new laws that further restrict access to intellectual property “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” Relying on cases, statutes and recent …