Law Commons^™

Thin But Not Anorexic: Copyright Protection For Compilations And Other Fact Works, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

Questions about the copyrightability of compilations and other low authorship fact works, and about the scope of protection, have continued to trouble courts long after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Services Co. in 1991. Justice O'Connor's opinion, explaining why a standard white pages telephone directory did not meet the constitutional and statutory requirements for copyright protection, defined an original work of authorship as one that is independently created by its author and that evidences at least a minimal level of creativity. The latter requirement has been elusive, in part because Justice O'Connor defined …

Congressional Authority Over Intellectual Property Policy After Eldred V. Ashcroft: Deference, Empty Limitations, And Risks To The Public Domain, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

The United States Supreme Court upheld the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (CTEA) in Eldred v. Ashcroft. The Court ruled that Congress had not exceeded its authority under the Copyright Clause by extending the copyright term twenty years and applying this extension retroactively to existing copyrighted works that otherwise would have entered the public domain at the end of their current, nonextended terms. The majority found a rational basis for CTEA and showed great deference to the authority of Congress to set policy that, in its judgment, effectuates the aims of the Copyright Clause. Although this deference to …

Transaction Costs And Patent Reform, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

This article considers current proposals for patent law reform in light of a simple theory about intellectual property law: In a world without transactions costs, the assignment of property rights is not necessary to stimulate the optimal production of creative goods. Because potential users of inventions could contract for their creation, a compelling justification for granting property rights in these intangibles is the reduction of real-world transaction and information costs that hinder, or make impossible, contract formation between users and creators. Proposals for patent law reform, therefore, should be evaluated by whether a change in legal rights, or in the …

Standard Setting, Patents, And Access Lock-In: Rand Licensing And The Theory Of The Firm, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

Many leading voluntary standard-setting organizations (SSOs) have adopted intellectual property (IP) policies under which participants must promise to license any patents on technology that they contribute to a standard, and to do so on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The standard setting literature includes a substantial focus on the widespread use of this RAND promise. A common refrain in these analyses of the RAND promise is that its meaning is dysfunctionally uncertain. We know more about the RAND promise, however, than the existing literature suggests. I show that we already know the RAND promise's core meaning, and why it remains …

No Reason To Live: Dilution Laws As Unconstitutional Restrictions On Commercial Speech, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

Traditionally, trademark and unfair competition laws have protected trademark owners against unauthorized uses of their marks that are likely to confuse or mislead consumers about the origin of goods or services. If a particular use is not likely to confuse or mislead, then it is not actionable under traditional infringement regimes. When applied to commercial speech, as opposed to noncommercial expression, traditional trademark and unfair competition laws generally have survived scrutiny under the First Amendment, because these laws restrict only commercial speech that is false or misleading.

Dilution laws, however, do not restrict speech that is false or misleading. Dilution …

Patent Ships Sail An Antitrust Sea, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

This brief essay arises from my participation in an April 2006 conference at Seattle University Law School, entitled At the Intersection of Antitrust and Intellectual Property Law: Looking Both Ways to Avoid a Collision. This intersection metaphor is a common one for describing antitrust law's relationship with intellectual property law, among both courts and commentators. This essay explores a different metaphor: patent ships sail an antitrust sea, protecting those aboard from competition's harshest dangers - but only for a time. The nautical metaphor evokes three ideas that the crossroads metaphor does not. First, vigorous competition is the pervasive, baseline reality; …