Law Commons^™

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: An Updated Analysis, Kimberlee G. Weatherall

Kimberlee G Weatherall

This paper provides an updated analysis of the issues posed by negotiations for the ACTA, as at November 2009.

Acts Of Parliament: Privatisation, Promulgation And Crown Copyright – Is There A Need For A Royal Royalty?, Mark Perry

Mark Perry

The road of privatisation of government assets is littered with the debris of mishaps and oversights. One clear illustration is the history and effect of the sale of the Government Printing Office (GPO) in 1990. Within the sale process there was a failure to ensure adequate consideration of the policy implications from an important perspective, namely the effect of privatising the means of promulgation of the normative materials of the State. Furthermore, there was no enquiry into the dubious assumptions made as to Crown Copyright in legislation. Intellectual property rights in primary legal materials create a dilemma for policy makers. …

Repackaging, Pharmaceuticals, And The European Union: Managing Gray Markets In An Uncertain Legal Environment, Robert Bird

Robert C Bird

One of the most robust gray markets in the world is the parallel importation of pharmaceutical drugs in the European Union (EU). Drug manufacturers have tried to stop parallel importation with over thirty years of litigation. The result has applied. This manuscript examines the forces underlying the EU gray market for drugs, discusses how trademark law and not patent law has become the primary basis for legal challenges, and offers strategies for manufacturers to impede importers in a truly chaotic legal environment.

Stifling Or Stimulating - The Role Of Gene Patents In Research And Genetic Testing, Lawrence M. Sung

Lawrence M. Sung

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Protection Or Protectionism? Declaratory Judgment Use By Patent Owners Against Prospective Infringers, Lawrence M. Sung

Lawrence M. Sung

No abstract provided.

Collegiality And Collaboration In The Age Of Exclusivity, Lawrence M. Sung

Lawrence M. Sung

No abstract provided.

Ip And Antitrust: Errands Into The Wilderness, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

IP AND ANTITRUST: ERRANDS INTO THE WILDERNESS

ABSTRACT

Antitrust and intellectual property law both seek to promote economic welfare by facilitating competition and investment in innovation. At various times both antitrust and IP law have wandered off this course and have become more driven by special interests. Today, antitrust and IP are on very different roads to reform. Antitrust began an Errand into the Wilderness in the late 1970s with a series of Supreme Court decisions that linked the plaintiff’s harm and right to obtain a remedy to the competition-furthering goals of antitrust policy. Today, patent law has begun its …

Copyright Infringement And Harmless Speech, Christina Bohannan

Christina Bohannan

Copyright law is a glaring and unjustified exception to the rule that the government may not prohibit speech without a showing that it causes harm. While the First Amendment sometimes protects even harmful speech, it virtually never allows the prohibition of harmless speech. Yet, while other speech-burdening laws, such as defamation and right of publicity laws, require demonstrable evidence that the defendant’s speech causes actual harm, copyright law does not make harm a requirement of infringement. Although copyright law considers harm to the market for the copyrighted work as a factor in fair use analysis, harm is not always required …

Reconciling Fair Use And Trademark Use, Margreth Barrett

Margreth Barrett

This article looks to early common law, the legislative history of the Lanham Act, and public policy considerations to evaluate the relationship of the Lanham Act’s trademark use requirement to the trademark fair use defense. Although a number of commentators have suggested the contrary, I conclude that requiring infringement plaintiffs to demonstrate the defendant’s “trademark use” as part of its case-in-chief is consistent with the fair use defense, which waives liability if the defendant can demonstrate that its use was “in good faith” and “otherwise than as a trademark” only to describe its goods or services. These two “use” doctrines …

Intellectual Property Rights And The Right To Participate In Cultural Life, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Although many contend that human rights law is a justification for intellectual property rights, precisely the opposite is true. Human rights law is far more a limit on intellectual property rights than a rationale for such regimes. In a variety of ways, human rights law requires states to take specific, concrete steps to limit the effects of intellectual property rights in order to protect international human rights. This powerful and emancipatory dimension of human rights law has unfortunately been overshadowed by those who claim human rights as a basis for granting exclusive rights.

The U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and …

Protecting Rights Online, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Although the human rights and access to knowledge (A2K) movements share many of the same goals, their legal and regulatory agendas have little in common. While state censorship online is a central concern for human rights advocates, this issue has been largely ignored by the A2K movement. Likewise, human rights advocates have failed to examine the cumulative effect of expanding copyright protections on education and culture. These disparate agendas reflect fundamentally different views about what states should regulate and the role of international institutions. Overcoming this divide is critical to ensuring the movements can draw on their respective strengths to …

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Katherine J. Strandburg, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann

Brett Frischmann

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.

Who's In The Club? A Response To Oliar And Sprigman, Katherine J. Strandburg

Katherine J. Strandburg

This brief essay responds to the very interesting article, "There's No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, 94 Va. L. Rev. 1787 (2008), by Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman.

Patent Citation Networks Revisited: Signs Of A Twenty-First Century Change, Katherine J. Strandburg, Gabor Csardi, Laszlo Zalanyi, Jan Tobochnik, Peter Erdi

Katherine J. Strandburg

This Article reports an empirical study of the network composed of patent “nodes” and citation “links” between them. It builds on an earlier study, in which we argued that trends in the growth of the patent citation network provide evidence that the explosive growth in patenting in the late twentieth century was due at least in part to the issuance of increasingly trivial patents. We defined a measure of patent stratification based on comparative probability of citation; an increase in this measure suggests that the USPTO is issuing patents of comparatively less technological significance. Provocatively, we found that stratification increased …

Facebook 2 Blackberry And Database Trading Systems: Morphing Social Networking To Business Growth In A Global Recession, Roger M. Groves

Roger M. Groves

FACEBOOK 2 BLACKBERRY AND DATABASE TRADING SYSTEMS: MORPHING SOCIAL NETWORKING TO BUSINESS GROWTH IN A GLOBAL RECESSION Summary Facebook has now applications to the Blackberry Smartphone and IPhone. And Facebook has exploded internationally. If the Facebook social networking technology has applications to Blackberry, why not business? And as any business looks for growth, the market is not an existing heavily saturated United States, but a global market. Can the Facebook model of data sharing be customized to propel US technology firms into new international markets? This article claims the affirmative, through a multilateral clearing system, with credits and vouchers, as …

Who Owns Your Body? A Study In Literature And Law, Lori B. Andrews

Lori B. Andrews

No abstract provided.