Law Commons^™

The End Of Copyright, David Nimmer

Vanderbilt Law Review

One December 8, 1994, Congress ended the experiment that it commenced on May 31, 1790, in the first Judiciary Act:' legislating an autonomous body of United States copyright law governed by the Copyright Clause of the Constitution. We witnessed, on December 8, a major change of constitutional proportions; even more significantly, we experienced the first tremors of certain tectonic shifts in United States sovereignty; and, perhaps most significantly, we undertook a sea change in defining the end that copyright serves, the identity of the master in the copyright sphere.

I refer to enactment of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (the …

Biodiversity: Opportunities And Obligations, Jeffrey P. Kushan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Mr. Kushan discusses the technology transfer provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and outlines three themes found in the Convention related to technology transfer: benefit sharing, sovereign rights, and intellectual property rights protection. After briefly explaining the first two themes, the Article focuses on the third theme, the protection (or lack thereof) of intellectual property rights in the Convention. Mr. Kushan explains how the ideological split on intellectual property rights protection between the North and South found its way into the Convention and created ambiguous messages on intellectual property rights. Southern countries, who fear that strong intellectual property rights …

Biodiversity Prospecting: Fulfilling The Mandate Of The Biodiversity Convention, Edgar J. Asebey, Jill D. Kempenaa

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

After a brief overview of biodiversity prospecting, the authors review the historical context of biodiversity prospecting, including the common heritage doctrine, international patent law, and the Biodiversity Convention. The authors analyze the four major United States prospecting initiatives to date and identify their strengths and shortcomings. The authors then investigate two possible alternatives: (1) biological resource cartelization and (2) the development of a new type of biodiversity enterprise. The authors advocate the latter as a means of complying with the Biodiversity Convention.