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Full-Text Articles in Law

Cut In Tiny Pieces: Ensuring That Fragmented Ownership Does Not Chill Creativity, Henry H. Perritt Jr. Jan 2011

Cut In Tiny Pieces: Ensuring That Fragmented Ownership Does Not Chill Creativity, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The market for video entertainment is growing and becoming more diverse as technology reduces barriers to entry for small, independent moviemakers and distributors and increases consumers’ ability to access the media of their choice. The growing complexity of the market, however, increases transaction costs for new entrants who must obtain licenses to copyrighted music, characters, storylines, or scenes that they incorporate into their movies. The entertainment bonanza offered by new technologies may not be realized in practice because of market failure. The purposes of the Copyright and Patents Clause are frustrated because creators of new works wishing to use new …


Are Those Who Ignore History Doomed To Repeat It?, Peter Decherney, Nathan Ensmenger, Christopher S. Yoo Jan 2011

Are Those Who Ignore History Doomed To Repeat It?, Peter Decherney, Nathan Ensmenger, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

In The Master Switch, Tim Wu argues that four leading communications industries have historically followed a single pattern that he calls “the Cycle.” Because Wu’s argument is almost entirely historical, the cogency of its claims and the force of its policy recommendations depends entirely on the accuracy and completeness of its treatment of the historical record. Specifically, he believes that industries begin as open, only to be transformed into closed systems by a great corporate mogul until some new form of ingenuity restarts the Cycle anew. Interestingly, even taken at face value, many of the episodes described in the …


Rethinking Consideration In The Electronic Age, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen O'Rourke Feb 2009

Rethinking Consideration In The Electronic Age, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen O'Rourke

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Our fast-paced age of electronic agreements that ostensibly govern transactions as diverse as downloading software, ordering goods, and engaging in collaborative development projects raises questions regarding the suitability of contract law as the appropriate legal framework. While this question arises in many settings, we focus here on the free and open source software (FOSS) movement because of the maturity and success of its model and the ubiquity of its software. We explore in particular whether open source licenses are supported by consideration, and argue that they are, and that open source licenses are contracts. We further argue that a contractual …


Turned On Its Head?: Norms, Freedom, And Acceptable Terms In Internet Contracting, Richard Warner Jan 2008

Turned On Its Head?: Norms, Freedom, And Acceptable Terms In Internet Contracting, Richard Warner

All Faculty Scholarship

Is the Internet turning contract law on its head? Many commentators contend it is. Precisely this issue arises in current controversies over end user license agreements (EULAs) and Terms of Use agreements (TOUs, the agreements governing our use of web sites). Commentators complain that, in both cases, the formation process unduly restricts buyers’ freedom; and, that sellers and web site owners exploit the process to impose terms that deprive consumers of important intellectual property and privacy rights. The courts ignore the criticisms and routinely enforce EULAs and TOUs. There is truth on both sides of this court/commentator divide. EULAs and …


Patent Injunctions And The Problem Of Uniformity Cost, Michael W. Carroll Jul 2007

Patent Injunctions And The Problem Of Uniformity Cost, Michael W. Carroll

Working Paper Series

In eBay v. MercExchange, the Supreme Court correctly rejected a one-size-fits-all approach to patent injunctions. However, the Court's opinion does not fully recognize that the problem of uniformity in patent law is more general and that this problem cannot be solved through case-by-case analysis. This Essay provides a field guide for implementing eBay using functional analysis and insights from a uniformity-cost framework developed more fully in prior work. While there can be no general rule governing equitable relief in patent cases, the traditional four factor analysis for injunctive relief should lead the cases to cluster around certain patterns that often …


Creative Commons And The New Intermediaries, Michael W. Carroll Aug 2005

Creative Commons And The New Intermediaries, Michael W. Carroll

Working Paper Series

This symposium contribution examines the disintermediating and reintermediating roles played by Creative Commons licenses on the Internet. Creative Commons licenses act as a disintermediating force because they enable end-to-end transactions in copyrighted works. The licenses have reintermediating force by enabling new services and new online communities to form around content licensed under a Creative Commons license. Intermediaries focused on the copyright dimension have begun to appear online as search engines, archives, libraries, publishers, community organizers, and educators. Moreover, the growth of machine-readable copyright licenses and the new intermediaries that they enable is part of a larger movement toward a Semantic …


Whose Music Is It Anyway?: How We Came To View Musical Expression As A Form Of Property -- Part I, Michael W. Carroll Sep 2003

Whose Music Is It Anyway?: How We Came To View Musical Expression As A Form Of Property -- Part I, Michael W. Carroll

Working Paper Series

Many participants in the music industry consider unauthorized downloading of music files over the Internet to be “theft” of their “property.” Many Internet users who exchange music files reject that characterization. Prompted by this dispute, this Article explores how those who create and distribute music first came to look upon music as their property and when in Western history the law first supported this view. By analyzing the economic and legal structures governing musicmaking in Western Europe from the classical period in Greece through the Renaissance, the Article shows that the law first granted some exclusive rights in the Middle …


Withdrawal Of The Reference: Rights, Rules, And Remedies For Unwelcomed Web-Linking, Walter Effross Jan 1998

Withdrawal Of The Reference: Rights, Rules, And Remedies For Unwelcomed Web-Linking, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.


Assaying Computer Associates V. Altai: How Will The Golden Nugget Test Pan Out, Walter Effross Jan 1993

Assaying Computer Associates V. Altai: How Will The Golden Nugget Test Pan Out, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.