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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use, Wendy J. Gordon
Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Lawyers more than most people should be aware that what language calls "facts" are not necessarily equivalent to things that exist in the world. After all, when in ordinary conversation someone says "it's a fact that X happened," the speaker usually means, "I believe the thing I describe has happened in the world." But when a litigator presents something as a "fact," she often means only that a good faith argument can be made on behalf of its existence. Two sets of factfinders can look at the same event and come to diametrically opposed conclusions-each of which is binding, but …
Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
When competitors engage in unrestrained copying of each others' intangible products, the structure can resemble a prisoner's dilemma in which free choice leads to unnecessarily low individual payoffs and low social welfare. There are many ways to avoid these low payoffs, such as contract enforcement, direct regulation of copying behavior through IP, and direct government subsidies. All of these modes alter the payoff pattern away from prisoner's dilemma.
When should lawmakers place copyright law or other IP law among the prime options to consider?
Because copyright, patent, misappropriation and the like all work through private-property markets, one key is to …
On Owning Information: Intellectual Property And The Restitutionary Impulse, Wendy J. Gordon
On Owning Information: Intellectual Property And The Restitutionary Impulse, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Every day someone invests time, labor, or money in creating a valuable intangible. Someone collects information, creates an idea, designs a boat hull, writes a book, or comes up with a new way to market a product that someone else developed. Judicial treatment of these and other cognate occurrences has shifted dramatically in recent years.
Of Harms And Benefits: Torts, Restitution, And Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Of Harms And Benefits: Torts, Restitution, And Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Copyright and patent take the form of ordinary property. As tangible property has physical edges, intellectual property statutes create boundaries by defining the subject matters within their zone of protection. As real property owners have rights to prevent strangers from entering their land, intellectual property statutes and case law grant owners rights to exclude strangers from using the protected work in specified ways. As tangible property can be bought and sold, bequeathed and inherited, so can copyrights and patents.