Law Commons^™

Testing Modern Trademark Law's Theory Of Harm, Mark Mckenna

Journal Articles

Modern scholarship takes a decidedly negative view of trademark law. Commentators rail against doctrinal innovations like dilution and initial interest confusion. They clamor for clearer and broader defenses. And they plead for greater First Amendment scrutiny of various applications of trademark law. But beneath all of this criticism lies overwhelming agreement that consumer confusion is harmful. This easy acceptance of the harmfulness of confusion is a problem because it operates at too high a level of generality, ignoring important differences between types of relationships about which consumers might be confused. Failure to differentiate between these different relationships has enabled trademark …

Tribute To John M. Kernochan – January 11, 2008, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Were it not for Jack, I probably would not be teaching at Columbia Law School today. Way back in 1983, Jack, then several years from emeritus status, determined to identify and recruit a prospective intellectual property scholar who would join him in building an IP program for Columbia, and might in the long run succeed him. Jack had read all the articles about copyright published by young scholars and would-be scholars, and then proceeded to contact some of the authors for interviews. The interview led, at least in my case, to an invitation to teach a session of Jack's "Business …

Grundläggande Immaterialrätt, Ulrika Wennersten, Ulf Maunsbach

Ulrika Wennersten

No abstract provided.

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.

Internet Killed The Copyright Law: Perfect 10 V. Google And The Devastating Impact On The Exclusiive Right To Display, Deborah B. Morse

Deborah Brightman Morse

Never has the dissonance between copyright and innovation been so extreme. The Internet provides enormous economic growth due to the strength of e-commerce, and affords an avenue for creativity and the wide dissemination of information. Nevertheless, the Internet has become a plague on copyright law. The advent of the digital medium has made the unlawful reproduction, distribution, and display of copyrighted works essentially effortless. The law has been unable to keep pace with the rapid advance of technology. For the past decade, Congress has been actively attempting to draft comprehensible legislation in an effort to afford copyright owners more protection …

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.