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Full-Text Articles in Law
Once And Future Copyright, James Gibson
Once And Future Copyright, James Gibson
Law Faculty Publications
Copyright is like a well-meaning but ultimately bothersome friend, eager to help but nearly impossible to get rid of. It attaches indiscriminately to the simplest acts of expression, without regard for whether the author needs or wants its protection. This automatic propertization made sense in the print era, when mass distribution of information was an expensive process rarely undertaken by those with no plans to profit from their creativity. It makes little sense today. The following article shows that copyright's overly solicitous nature is the source of several seemingly unrelated and intractable problems - e.g., closed code, copyright as censorship, …
Initial Interest Confusion: Standing At The Crossroads Of Trademark Law, Jennifer E. Rothman
Initial Interest Confusion: Standing At The Crossroads Of Trademark Law, Jennifer E. Rothman
All Faculty Scholarship
While the benchmark of trademark infringement traditionally has been a demonstration that consumers are likely to be confused by the use of a similar or identical trademark to identify the goods or services of another, a court-created doctrine called initial interest confusion allows liability for trademark infringement solely on the basis that a consumer might initially be interested, attracted, or distracted by a competitor's, or even a non-competitor's, product or service. Initial interest confusion is being used with increasing frequency, especially on the Internet, to shut down speech critical of trademark holders and their products and services, to prevent comparative …
Introduction: The State Of Play, Beth Simone Noveck
Introduction: The State Of Play, Beth Simone Noveck
Articles & Chapters
No abstract provided.
The Constitutional Failing Of The Anticybersquatting Act, Ned Snow
The Constitutional Failing Of The Anticybersquatting Act, Ned Snow
Faculty Publications
Eminent domain and thought control are occurring in cyberspace. Through the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), the government transfers domain names from domain-name owners to private parties based on the owners' bad-faith intent. The owners receive no just compensation. The private parties who are recipients of the domain names are trademark holders whose trademarks correspond with the domain names. Often the trademark holders have no property rights in those domain names: trademark law only allows mark holders to exclude others from making commercial use of their marks; it does not allow mark holders to reserve the marks for their own …