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Full-Text Articles in Law
Piracy Deserves No Privacy, Frank Chao
Piracy Deserves No Privacy, Frank Chao
Duke Law & Technology Review
The Recording Industry Association of America ("RIAA"), the music industry's trade and lobbying group, recently initiated a controversial tactic to bring to surface previously anonymous digital pirates of the Internet. This aggressive tactic aims to make safe the digital oceans for copyright and involves identifying and bringing claims against infringing individuals who download, swap, and/or post copyrighted music illegally via the Internet. The RIAA cares not who the infringers are or whether the infringers know the illegality of their actions. Nor does the music industry concern itself with the inevitable storm of backlash bound to fall upon them for suing …
Lights, Camera, Lawsuit, A. J. Bedel
Lights, Camera, Lawsuit, A. J. Bedel
Duke Law & Technology Review
As the speed of Internet access improves, the film industry will need to explore its options for eliminating the downloading of digital movie files. After examining the successes and failures of the music industry in its battle with peer-to-peer networks, the film industry has begun to follow its predecessor. However, the nature of film as an entertainment medium is quite different than that of music. As a result, the film industry could implement creative solutions to this problem that would not have been available to the music industry. A recent study shows that most films available on the Internet have …
Unintended Consequences: State Merger Statutes And Nonassignable Licenses, Joshua G. Graubart
Unintended Consequences: State Merger Statutes And Nonassignable Licenses, Joshua G. Graubart
Duke Law & Technology Review
The confused state of most state corporate merger statutes allows many intellectual property licenses to find their way into unintended hands by way of corporate merger, in spite of non-assignment clauses. Clearly a detriment to licensors, corporate licensees too should be wary of depending upon the merger statute; a court ruling may not go their way. The states must clean up their collective act and bring some much needed certainty to a highly unpredictable intersection of corporate and intellectual property law.
Strengthening The Distinction Between Copyright And Trademark: The Supreme Court Takes A Stand, Jessica Bohrer
Strengthening The Distinction Between Copyright And Trademark: The Supreme Court Takes A Stand, Jessica Bohrer
Duke Law & Technology Review
Until recently, the question of whether §43 of the Lanham Act prevented the unaccredited copying of an un-copyrighted work was an open one. However, in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, the United States Supreme Court speaks directly on this issue, emphasizing the distinction between copyright and trademark protections and cautioning against "misuse or overextension" of trademark protections into areas traditionally covered by copyright or patent law. This iBrief assesses the importance of such line drawing and explores the implications of this decision.
Are We Legislating Away Our Scientific Future? The Database Debate, Dov Greenbaum
Are We Legislating Away Our Scientific Future? The Database Debate, Dov Greenbaum
Duke Law & Technology Review
The ambiguity of the present copyright laws governing the protection of databases creates a situation where database owners, unsure of how IP laws safeguard their information, overprotect their data with oppressive licenses and technological mechanisms (condoned by the DMCA) that impede interoperation. Databases are fundamental to scientific research, yet the lack of interoperability between databases and limited access inhibits this research. The US Congress, spurred by the European Database Directive, and heavily lobbied by the commercial database industry, is presently considering ways to legislate database protections; most of the present suggestions for legislation will be detrimental to scientific progress. The …
Students, Music And The Net: A Comment On Peer-To-Peer File Sharing, David L. Lange
Students, Music And The Net: A Comment On Peer-To-Peer File Sharing, David L. Lange
Duke Law & Technology Review
As most of the public now know, the recording industry has lately filed civil suits alleging copyright infringement against hundreds of individual defendants across the country, many (I think most) of them college students and campus hangers-on. Hundreds more such suits are said to be in the offing. The nature of the infringements? Peer-to-peer file sharing via the Internet: a kind of piracy, to use the term favored by the industry, or downloading, as it is generally thought of by the students themselves - but from either perspective, the practice of recording music from the Net while making it available …
Eldred V. Ashcroft: How Artists And Creators Finally Got Their Due, Shalisha Francis
Eldred V. Ashcroft: How Artists And Creators Finally Got Their Due, Shalisha Francis
Duke Law & Technology Review
In regards to copyright the U.S. Constitution states: "Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The intellectual property clause was added to the Constitution because of the recognition of the importance of balancing both an author's interest in protecting their creative works with the public interest in maintaining a method by which those same works could enter the public domain. However, the ability to properly perform this balancing act has proven more …
Reality Bites: How The Biting Reality Of Piracy In China Is Working To Strengthen Its Copyright Laws, Graham J. Chynoweth
Reality Bites: How The Biting Reality Of Piracy In China Is Working To Strengthen Its Copyright Laws, Graham J. Chynoweth
Duke Law & Technology Review
This iBrief discusses how persistent international concern and emerging domestic concern over Chinese intellectual property theft have helped give sharper teeth to the Chinese copyright regime in the past two years and how these new laws may leave bite marks in the future.