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Full-Text Articles in Law
Vertical Restraints And Intellectual Property Law: Beyond Antitrust, Michael J. Meurer
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 …
Information Wants To Be Free: Intellectual Property And The Mythologies Of Control, R. Polk Wagner
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 …