Law Commons^™

Copyright For Engineered Dna: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?, Christopher M. Holman

Christopher M Holman

The rapidly emerging field of synthetic biology has tremendous potential to address some of the most compelling challenges facing our planet, by providing clean renewable energy, nutritionally-enhanced and environmentally friendly agricultural products, and revolutionary new life-saving cures. However, leaders in the synthetic biology movement have voiced concern that biotechnology's current patent-centric approach to intellectual property is in many ways ill-suited to meet the challenge of synthetic biology, threatening to impede follow-on innovation and open access technology. For years, copyright and patent protection for computer software have existed side-by-side, the two forms of intellectual property complementing one another. Numerous academic commentators …

Everything Is Connected, Kembrew Mcleod

Kembrew McLeod

The article discusses U.S. copyright law and the copyright clearance system, focusing on the author's documentary film "Copyright Criminals," which aired on Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It explores sampling and collage in audiovisual media, commenting on use of the practice by hip-hop group Public Enemy. Other topics include the Washington, D.C. Center for Social Media, intellectual property, and fair use. The author also examines his book "Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property" and a prank in which he successfully copyrighted the phrase "Freedom of Expression"

Copyright And The First Amendment: Comrades, Combatants Or Uneasy Allies?, Joseph P. Bauer

Joseph P. Bauer

The copyright regime and the First Amendment seek to promote the same goals. Both seek the creation and dissemination of more, better and more diverse literary, pictorial, musical and other works. But, they use significantly different means to achieve those goals. The copyright laws afford to the creator of a work the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, transform and perform that work for a extended period of time. The First Amendment, on the other hand, proclaims that Congress “shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,” thus at least nominally indicating that limitations on …

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H Brian Holland

H Brian Holland

Social Semiotics in the Fair Use Analysis

34,314 words

3,809 footnotes (Bluebook formatted)

This article presents an alternate theory of fair use, employing social semiotics as a process theory of meaning-making to frame the transformativeness inquiry. It is an argument for an expansion of fair use based not on theories of authorship or rights of autonomy, but rather a theory of the audience linked to social practice. The article asks, in essence, whether audiences determine the meaning, purpose, function, or social benefit of an allegedly infringing work, often regardless of what the work’s creator did or intended. If so, does …

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H Brian Holland

H Brian Holland

Social Semiotics in the Fair Use Analysis

34,314 words (including 380 footnotes)

This article presents an alternate theory of fair use, employing social semiotics as a process theory of meaning-making to frame the transformativeness inquiry. It is an argument for an expansion of fair use based not on theories of authorship or rights of autonomy, but rather a theory of the audience linked to social practice. The article asks, in essence, whether audiences determine the meaning, purpose, function, or social benefit of an allegedly infringing work, often regardless of what the work’s creator did or intended. If so, does this …

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H. Brian Holland

H. Brian Holland

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H. Brian Holland

H. Brian Holland

Towards A Holistic Approach To Technology And Climate Change: What Would Form Part Of An Answer?, Estelle Derclaye, Abbe Brown

Estelle Derclaye

No abstract provided.

Protecting Innovation In Computer Software, Biotechnology, And Nanotechnology, Dennis S. Karjala

Dennis S Karjala

In the 1970=s, paying virtually no attention to the fundamental distinction between patent and copyright subject matter, Congress decided to protect computer programs as a Aliterary work@ under copyright law. As a result, a work of technology for the first time was consciously placed under the protective umbrella of a statute designed for art, music, and literature. While the vulnerability of computer program code to cheap and easy verbatim copying supplied a policy basis for Aanti-copy@ protection of code, courts often analogized these congressionally anointed Aliterary works@ to broadly protected novels and plays rather than thinly protected technical specifications and …

Heart Pills Are Red, Viagra Is Blue… When Does Pill Color Become Functional? An Analysis Of Utilitarian And Aesthetic Functionality And Their Unintended Side Effects In The Pharmaceutical Industry, Signe H. Naeve

Signe H. Naeve

Abstract: As consumers we often associate pill color and shape with particular medications. Should that trade dress be protected beyond the expiration of the patent? Legal scholars have recognized some of the tensions and inconsistencies in court opinions when it comes to trade dress protection for pill shape and color. This article focuses on the specific tensions between requiring secondary meaning and non-functionality, as well as the potential of “genericide” when generic pharmaceuticals enter the market. Ultimately this article makes some novel recommendations to assess functionality at the time of FDA approval for the pharmaceutical and to have the FDA …

Running The Gamut From A To B: Federal Trademark And False Advertising Law, Rebecca Tushnet

Rebecca Tushnet

The Lanham Act bars both trademark infringement and false advertising, in nearly identical and often overlapping language. In some circumstances, courts have interpreted the two provisions in the same way, but in other areas there has been significant doctrinal divergence, often to the detriment of the law. This Article argues that each branch of the Lanham Act has important lessons to offer the other. Courts should rationalize their treatment of implied claims, whether of sponsorship or of other facts; they should impose a materiality requirement, such that the only unlawful claims are those that actually matter to consumers, to trademark …

Property's End: Why Competition Policy Should Limit The Right Of Publicity, Steven Semeraro

Steven Semeraro

The right of publicity is an intellectual property right that empowers celebrities to prohibit the unauthorized use of their names, images, and identities. Over the past two decades, academic commentators have presented powerful critiques of this right. Yet, legislatures and courts have turned a deaf ear, continuing to expand publicity rights. This article has two goals. First, it explains why the seemingly persuasive critique of the right of publicity has failed to influence law makers. The right’s critics claim that publicity cannot be property because the arguments used to justify actual property simply do not apply to publicity. When one …

Rights, Privileges And Access To Information, Alina Ng

Alina Ng

Protecting property rights in creative works represent a classic institutional approach to a specific economic problem of non-rivalness and non-excludability of information. By providing the copyright owner with an enforceable right against non-paying members of society, copyright laws encourage the production and dissemination of literary and artistic works to society for the purposes of learning. Implicit in the grant of property rights is the assumption that commercial incentives foster creative activity and productivity. In recent years, literary and artistic works have increasingly become the subject matter of exclusive property rights and control, particularly as new technologies emerge to provide users …

Language And Culture In Intellectual Property Law: A Book Review (Reviewing Jessica Reymann's "The Rhetoric Of Intellectual Property: Copyright And The Regulation Of Digital Culture), Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

Jessica Reyman’s THE RHETORIC OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: COPYRIGHT LAW AND THE REGULATION OF DIGITAL CULTURE is a book whose time has come. As a book about the rhetorical divide between the content industry and copyright activists, it analyzes the deep rifts between the language of incentives and exclusivity and the counterdiscourse of cooperation and the commons. And as a piece about the upheaval in the socio-legal landscape of intellectual property rights, it is in good company. There are multitudes of recent books and articles that seek a solution to the divide that animates disputes about owners and users (many of …

Masur - Isp Licensing Article, Steven R. Masur

vanessa m bonn

For years now, people have downloaded music over the internet without paying rights holders, and no industry solution has been universally adopted.

Amid a cacophony of discussion about new business models, DRM, three strikes you’re out laws and other solutions, one idea continues to gain support; ISP licensing, or charging people a fee on their internet service or mobile bill to be paid to rights holders for music downloaded over the internet. What is not discussed is exactly how this would work.

Steven Masur, outlines the law on ISP Licensing in the United States in his article, "Masur - The …

Die Institutionalisierung Von Wissensbeständen In Österreich. Die Diskrepanz Zwischen Wirtschaftlicher Realität Und Politik (The Institutionalization Of Knowledge In Austria: Coming To Grips Between Economic Reality & Policy), Roya Ghafele

Roya Ghafele

The University Act 2002 redefines ownership structures over intellectual property in Austria, thus paving the way for enhanced knowledge transfer and knowledge commercialization from public research institutions. This study discusses the various featers of the different models of generating and leveraging knowledge. It does so, by explaining the characteristics of technology markets and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of proprietary versus open knowledge generation from a perspective of new institutional economics. Particular emphasis is being put on the preservation of the public interest, deemed particularly important in the context of publicly funded research. The paper concludes by offering a rough …

Accounting For Intellectual Property?, Roya Ghafele

Roya Ghafele

Accounting constitutes a very specific form of language, which is highly standardized, mathematical in nature and seeks to uniformly and systematically describe events while avoiding expressions of individual creativity or explicit political positions. In this sense, accounting is a social, cultural and historical artefact rather than a natural or technical phenomenon and can therefore be viewed as the decisive instrument to create and maintain imagined business communities. On the balance sheet, IP experiences a specific form of authorization. It is represented in the discourse of accounting by ‘intangibles’, an imprecise term associated with the increasingly observed ‘gap between the market …

Machine-Or-Transformation Test Hit The Board: Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Following Bilski, Peter L. Ludwig

Peter L. Ludwig

In In re Bilski the Federal Circuit held that the machine-or-transformation test is the test to apply to determine subject matter eligibility of process claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The en banc majority opinion of the Federal Circuit introduced the machine-or-transformation test based upon Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court will soon hand down a ruling letting the public know if this is the test that will be applied to process claims. Although patent practitioners may have a test to apply, application of the test is far from certain.

Convergence And Incongruence: Trademark Law And Icann’S Introduction Of New Generic Top-Level Domains, Christine Haight Farley

Christine Haight Farley

This paper demonstrates how problematic convergences between Internet technology, the demands of a burgeoning e-market and trademark laws have created myriad issues in international governance of domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that governs internet's infrastructure, recently approved a new policy that would allow it to accept applications for additional generic top-level domains (gTLDs). What ICANN contemplates is a uniform system to approve generic top level domains that is expected to have profound implications. Under this new plan anyone can apply for a new gTLD at any time and it could be literally …

Acta April 2010 - Analysis Of Provisions, Kimberlee G. Weatherall

Kimberlee G Weatherall

This paper analyses the potential impact of the proposed ACTA (January 2010 leaked text) on Australian law.

Good Design: A Proposal For The Proper Protection Of Market-Entry Industrial Design, Susanna Monseau

Susanna Monseau

Empirical research tells us that “[d]esign led companies have produced dramatically better share price performance for their investors.” However, in the U.S., in contrast to all European and the majority of other countries around the world, the legal system provides no specific protection for market-entry design. There is starting to be an appreciation of the importance of design to the economy and how the rise in counterfeit activity hurts designers. This paper argues that this rise in counterfeiting and piracy mean that it is important for Congress to finally create a limited protection for industrial design under U.S. law. It …

Patent Reform Arrives -- Without Congressional Action, James R. Farrand

James R. Farrand

Abstract is on cover page of ms.

Authors are not shown on ms to allow anonymous review. Author names and affiliations are available via an email request to the lead author.

Lead author's e-address is james.farrand@aporter.com

A Statistical Analysis Of Trade Secret Litigation In Federal Courts, David S. Almeling, Darin W. Snyder, Michael Sapoznikow, Whitney E. Mccollum, Jill Weader

David S. Almeling

This Article presents, for the first time, a comprehensive statistical analysis of trade secret litigation in federal courts.

Protecting Innovation In Computer Software, Biotechnology, And Nanotechnology, Dennis S. Karjala

Dennis S Karjala

In the 1970’s, paying virtually no attention to the fundamental distinction between patent and copyright subject matter, Congress decided to protect computer programs as a “literary work” under copyright law. As a result, a work of technology for the first time was consciously placed under the protective umbrella of a statute designed for art, music, and literature. While the vulnerability of computer program code to cheap and easy verbatim copying supplied a policy basis for “anti-copy” protection of code, courts often analogized these congressionally anointed “literary works” to broadly protected novels and plays rather than thinly protected technical specifications and …

The Wrong Tool For The Job: The Ip Problem With Non-Competition Agreements, Viva R. Moffat

Viva R. Moffat

THE WRONG TOOL FOR THE JOB:

THE IP PROBLEM WITH NON-COMPETITION AGREEMENTS

Viva R. Moffat

Abstract

In this article, I argue that non-competition agreements should be unenforceable. Although various attacks have been launched at non-competes, most of them have been aimed at reforming the doctrine rather than eliminating enforcement of the agreements entirely. This is because the justifications for non-competes have been left mostly unchallenged, and I undertake that task here.

The most problematic and least examined of these is the IP justification: in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, many argue that non-competes are necessary to protect trade secrets and other …

Not Only Innovation But Also Collaboration, Funding, Goodwill And Commitment: Which Role For Patent Laws In Postcopenhagen Climate Change Action, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

Patent laws can do their bit to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, accelerated grant procedures and reduction of fees have been put in place by among others the UK and US patent offices. Private initiatives such as the eco-patent commons to licence technology free of charge have been taken. But greening patent law is only a small part of the solution. However well-intentioned all these initiatives are, for several reasons, they may not be sufficient or even at all used. More than intellectual property-related solutions, what will be needed is non-intellectual property-related solutions such as using technology …

The Hacker's Aegis, Derek E. Bambauer, Oliver Day

Derek Bambauer

Intellectual property law stifles critical research on software security vulnerabilities, placing computer users at risk. Researchers who discover flaws often face IP-based legal threats if they reveal findings to anyone other than the software vendor. This Article argues that the interplay between law and vulnerability data challenges existing scholarship on how intellectual property should regulate information about improvements on protected works, and suggests weakening, not enhancing, IP protections where infringement is difficult to detect, lucrative, and creates significant negative externalities. It proposes a set of three reforms – “patches,” in software terms – to protect security research. Legal reform would …

The Death Of Big Law, Larry E. Ribstein

Larry E. Ribstein

Large law firms face unprecedented stress. Many have dissolved, gone bankrupt or significantly downsized in recent years. This paper provides an economic analysis of the forces driving the downsizing of Big Law. It shows that this downsizing reflects a basically precarious business model rather than just a shrinking economy. Because large law firms do not own durable, firm-specific property, a set of strict conditions must exist to bind the firm together. Several pressures have pushed the unraveling of these conditions, including increased global competition and the rise of in-house counsel. The large law firm’s business model therefore requires fundamental restructuring. …

Ip Misuse As Foreclosure, Christina Bohannan

Christina Bohannan

In an age of IP expansionism, the doctrine most explicitly concerned with limiting IP overreaching has no defensible basis in IP policy. “Misuse” relates to the IP holder’s use of licenses and other arrangements to obtain rights “beyond the scope” of a statutory IP grant, but the doctrine has not established adequate principles for identifying the practices that should be condemned. The misuse doctrine evolved in patent law and concerned the tying of patented and unpatented goods. Courts held that such tying violated federal patent policy by expanding the statutory monopoly to include a second product not covered by the …

Copyright Liability For The Playing Of 'Music On Hold': Telstra Corporation Ltd V Australasian Performing Right Association Ltd, William Van Caenegem

William Van Caenegem

Extract: This is a test case brought by the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA), the assignee of copyright in musical and literary works for the purpose of the public performance rights (both live and mechanical), the right of transmission to subscribers to a diffusion service (the diffusion right) and the broadcast right. The question to be determined is whether Telstra (or Telecom as it was called at the outset of proceedings) by providing certain music on hold services, is liable to APRA because of a breach of their diffusion and/or broadcast rights under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). APRA sought …