Law Commons^™

Trademarks Under The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) With References To The New Trademark Law Of Spain, Effective July 31, 2002, And The Current Mexican Law, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

A trademark is any distinctive sign indicating that certain products or services have been manufactured or rendered by a specific person or company. This concept is currently recognized worldwide; however, the origin of trademarks dates back to antiquity when artisans placed their signatures or “marks” on their products containing an artistic or utilitarian element. Through time, these marks have evolved to such an extent that today, a reliable and efficient system for their registration and protection has been established. Besides protecting owners of trademarks, this system also helps consumers identify and purchase goods or services, which, because of the essence …

Cooperative Research And Technology Enhancement (Create) Act Of 2003: Hearing On H. R. 2390 Before The H. Subcomm. On Courts, The Internet And Intellectual Property Of The H. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., June 10, 2003 (Statement Of John R. Thomas, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), John R. Thomas

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

A Primer On U.S. Intellectual Property Rights Applicable To Music Information Retrieval Systems, Michael Carroll

PIJIP Faculty Scholarship

Digital technology has had a significant impact on the ways in which music information can be stored, transmitted, and used. Within the information sciences, music information retrieval has become an increasingly important and complex field. This brief article is addressed primarily to those involved in the design and implementation of systems for storing and retrieving digital files containing musical notation, recorded music, and relevant metadata – hereinafter referred to as a Music Information Retrieval System (“MIRS”). In particular, this group includes information specialists, software engineers, and the attorneys who advise them. Although peer-to-peer computer applications, such as Napster’s MusicShare or …

A Non-Harmonized Perspective On Parallel Imports: The Protection Of Intellectual Property Rights And The Free Movement Of Goods In International Trade, Krithpaka Boonfueng

SJD Dissertation Abstracts

This dissertation aims to define an appropriate international legal standard for the exhaustion doctrine as it pertains to parallel imports, being the importation of genuine goods but without authorization from intellectual property owners. The clarification of this issue is needed because developed and developing countries have different perspectives on the application of the exhaustion doctrine. Under the exhaustion doctrine, once an intellectual property owner deliberately releases or authorizes others to release goods into the stream of commerce, his exclusive right to further control the goods is no longer valid. However, there are three diverse aspects in the application of exhaustion …

Intellectual Property Law, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter for the OXFORD HANDBOOK ON LEGAL STUDIES provides an overview of the theoretical literature in Intellectual Property, and suggests directions for further study. The emphasis is on economic analysis, but effort is made to embrace other perspectives as well.

Freedom Of Expression, Democratic Norms, And Internet Governance, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Within a decade, the Internet has transformed into a global medium of mass communication and expression of all kinds. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that governs the Internet's infrastructure, assured the United States that it would govern the Internet's infrastructure democratically and would implement governance structures to take into account the interests of affected Internet users around the world. In particular, ICANN promised to employ deliberative and representative democratic structures in its decision-making bodies. Even though ICANN has (arguably) implemented such procedural democratic norms, it has failed to implement substantive norms of democratic governance, …

Spiritual But Not Intellectual? The Protection Of Sacred Intangible Traditional Knowledge, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The use of sacred aboriginal art is nothing new. It is fairly common to see dream catchers hanging from rear view mirrors in cars. In Australia, sacred aboriginal designs are often found on tea towels, rugs and restaurant placemats. In the United States, people routinely Commercialize Navajo rugs containing both sacred and profane designs with no connection to the Navajo nation. Millions of dollars of Indian crafts imported from Asia are sold in the United States each year. Another example is the taking of sacred Ami chants by the German rock group Enigma for its song Return to Innocence. Can …

Copyright As Tort Law's Mirror Image: 'Harms', 'Benefits', And The Uses And Limits Of Analogy, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This pair of papers involves a reprinting of "Of Harms and Benefits: Torts, Restitution, and Intellectual Property," 21 J. LEGAL STUDIES 449 (1992), along with an introduction to that article for students, entitled "Copyright as Tort's Mirror Image". Both involve comparisons between statutory intellectual property law and common law doctrines.

"Copyright as Tort's Mirror" uses personal injury law to introduce students to copyright, making a link between the doctrines through the notion of "externalities". Just as tort law discourages wastefully harmful behavior by making perpetrators bear some of the costs inflicted, copyright law encourages beneficial behavior by enabling authors to …

The Digital Trademark Right: The Troubling New Extraterritorial Reach Of National Law, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act authorizes the development of the digital trademark right. Under this new right, a trademark owner can petition a domestic court to transfer a foreign registrant's domain name to the trademark owner. The trademark owner does not need to travel to the foreign land for the litigation or to petition a foreign court for enforcement of the domestic court's decision. The property transfer order has a global effect, enjoining the foreign registrant from further use of its property in its home country. Is such extraterritorial extension of national law permissible? Does the new digital trademark right …

Some Realism About Indigenism, Michael Henry Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The debate about creating so-called intellectual property (“IP”)--legal monopolies--over indigenous information (a product mostly of Third World countries) is habitually (almost stereotypically) characterized by qualifications that such monopolies really don't fit, and further qualifications that although they don't fit they are the best alternative. But underlying both sets of qualifications is often a confusion about what the real problem is. Because of a frequent failure to analyze closely the problem (and sometimes because of misinformation mixed with an unhealthy dose of romanticism), critics far too often jump to the legal monopoly solution to problems that ironically may be in large …

Engaging Facts And Policy: A Multi-Institutional Approach To Patent System Reform, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, charged with adjudicating appeals in patent cases, has adopted an unusual approach that arrogates power over fact finding while it simultaneously invokes rule-formalism. Although the Federal Circuit's approach may be justified by the fact-finding and policy application deficiencies of the trial courts and the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), it has had a negative impact on innovation policy and has resulted in a patent system that is sorely in need of reform. This Article argues that because of the interdependence of the various institutions within the patent system, reform of the system …

Speeding Up The Crawl To The Top, Michael B. Abramowicz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The literature on competition in corporate law has debated whether competition is a "race to the bottom" or a "race to the top.” This Article endorses the increasing scholarly consensus that competition improves corporate law but argues that the pace of innovation in corporate law is likely to be slow. Because benefits of corporate law innovation are not internalized, neither states nor firms will have sufficient incentives to innovate. That competitive federalism is “to the top" suggests that the model could be applied beyond the corporate charter context, for example to areas such as bankruptcy, but that benefits from such …

Information Wants To Be Free: Intellectual Property And The Mythologies Of Control, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

This article challenges a central tenet of the recent criticism of intellectual property rights: the suggestion that the control conferred by such rights is detrimental to the continued flourishing of a public domain of ideas and information. I argue that such theories understate the significance of the intangible nature of information, and thus overlook the contribution that even perfectly controlled intellectual creations make to the public domain. In addition, I show that perfect control of propertized information - an animating assumption in much of the contemporary criticism - is both counterfactual and likely to remain so. These findings suggest that …

Anticompetitive Settlement Of Intellectual Property Disputes, Mark D. Janis, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Mark A. Lemley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Anticompetitive Settlement Of Intellectual Property Disputes, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Mark D. Janis, Mark A. Lemley

All Faculty Scholarship

The overwhelming majority of intellectual property lawsuits settle before trial. These settlements involve agreements between the patentee and the accused infringer, parties who are often competitors before the lawsuit. Because these competitors may agree to stop competing, to regulate the price each charges, and to exchange information about products and prices, settlements of intellectual property disputes naturally raise antitrust concerns. In this paper, we suggest a way to reconcile the interests of intellectual property law and antitrust law in evaluating intellectual property settlements. In Part I, we provide background on the issue. Part II argues that in most cases courts …

Draft Of Rendering Copyright Into Caesar - 2003, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

This article makes a simple suggestion. Copyright rules by money, so let it rule the money-bound. Let a different set of rules evolve for more complex uses, particularly when the users have a personal relationship with the utilized text. Copyright. When new artists make transformative use of existing works in settings not characterized by pre-use commercial negotiations, copyright should avoid imposing a distorting burden.

Vertical Restraints And Intellectual Property Law: Beyond Antitrust, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes how intellectual property (IP) law regulates six types of vertical restraints: restrictions on the field or location of use; restrictions on sharing; control over the frequency of use; restrictions on repair and modification; packaging requirements; and impediments to a buyer's decision to exit its relationship with a seller. There are three reasons to focus on IP oversight of vertical restraints separately from antitrust oversight. First, IP law covers a broader range of vertical restraints. Second, economic analysis of the antitrust-IP conflict focuses mainly on the potential of vertical restraints to exclude downstream competitors. IP doctrines that regulate …

Patent Thickets: Strategic Patenting Of Complex Technologies, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Patent race models assume that an innovator wins the only patent covering a product. But when technologies are complex, this property right is defective: ownership of a product's technology is shared, not exclusive. In that case I show that if patent standards are low, firms build "thickets" of patents, especially incumbent firms in mature industries. When they assert these patents, innovators are forced to share rents under cross-licenses, making R&D incentives sub-optimal. On the other hand, when lead time advantages are significant and patent standards are high, firms pursue strategies of "mutual non-aggression." Then R&D incentives are stronger, even optimal.