Law Commons^™

Multi-National Patent Litigation: Management Of Discovery And Settlement Issues And The Role Of The Judiciary, James Pooley, Vicki Huang

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

National patent laws protect intellectual property rights. However, these rights can only be enforced in the country that granted the patent. Therefore, a patent owner must pursue infringement or revocation proceedings in each country where his patent rights are challenged even if the defendant is the same party. Patent owners are forced to pursue duplicative litigation on a nation-by-nation basis,incurring significant costs and draining valuable judicial resources. Duplicative litigation may result in conflicting outcomes, the impact of which can be complex and costly.... This article will focus on Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. First, we will …

Breaking Through The "Tower Of Babel": A “Right To Be Forgotten" And How Trans-Systemic Thinking Can Help Re-Conceptualize Privacy Harm In The Age Of Analytics, Karen Eltis

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Smartphone, Dumb Regulations: Mixed Signals In Mobile Privacy, Christian Levis

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The smartphone has turned a user’s location into valuable information. Users of smart devices can use location-based mobile services to get driving directions, check into social networks, or even see which of their friends are around. But the use of this technology, and the new type of data created by it, raises privacy concerns as to who has access to one's location-based information. Because the only legislation covering this technology, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is more than twenty-five years old, courts encounter problems when trying to use it to resolve these privacy issues, often reaching illogical results. This Note …

A State Law Approach To Preserving Fair Use In Academic Libraries, David R. Hansen

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Every year academic libraries spend millions of dollars to provide their users access to copyrighted works. Much of that money goes not toward purchasing physical copies of books or journals, but toward licensing electronic content from publishers. In those electronic license agreements, the default rules for how users interact with copyrighted content is often altered, and academic library users are deprived of basic rights — especially rights such as fair use — which are granted under federal copyright law. The literature is flush with discussion of the misuse of private contracts to alter the rights granted by Congress in copyright’s …

Celebrity Endorsements In Non-Traditional Advertising: How The Ftc Regulations Fail To Keep Up With The Kardashians, Leah W. Feinman

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Advertisers have used the rise of reality television, social media, and the public's fascination with celebrities to connect with consumers in new and non-traditional ways. With these new techniques come new concerns over consumer protection. When an advertisement does not look like an advertisement, consumers can easily be misled. In 2009, the FTC implemented a set of Guides which were intended to clarify and interpret the regulations enforced by the FTC, and advise the public on how to conduct affairs regarding sponsorship disclosure, specifically in new media. As the note describes, the Guides are insufficient as applied to non-traditional advertising …

A Nation Of One? Community Standards In The Internet Era, Noah Hertz-Bunzl

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This note examines tensions between the community standards doctrine in First Amendment obscenity law and nationwide prosecutions of internet obscenity. The note focuses on recent cases on the topic, especially in the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sampling, Looping, And Mashing . . . Oh My!: How Hip Hop Music Is Scratching More Than The Surface Of Copyright Law, Tonya M. Evans

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This article examines the deleterious impact of copyright law on music creation. It highlights hip hop music as an example of a genre significantly and negatively impacted by 1) the per se infringement rule applied in some instances to cases involving unauthorized sampling of sound recordings; and 2) traditional (and arguably erroneous) assumptions in copyright law and policy of independent creation and Romantic authorship. For decades hip hop producers have relied on the innovative use of existing recordings (most of which are protected by copyright), to create completely new works. Specifically, cuttin’ and scratchin’, digital sampling, looping and (most recently) …

Protection For Informational Works After Feist Publications, Inc. V. Rural Telephone Service Co., Miriam Bitton

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit: Has It Fulfilled Congressional Expectations?, George C. Beighley Jr.

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article suggests that the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was a successful experiment that proves a change in the legal philosophy behind the jurisdiction for federal appellate courts from exclusively general regional jurisdiction to a more specific national subject matter jurisdiction can be successful. This Article provides a historical analysis of how the Federal Circuit was created by presenting interviews from those involved in its creation. The Article then examines the legislative intent behind the creation of the Federal Circuit by looking at the congressional history and interviewing those who testified before Congress. Finally, …

Moral Rights And Supernatural Fiction: Authorial Dignity And The New Moral Rights Agendas, Jacqueline D. Lipton Ph.D.

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

In recent years, several scholars have revisited the question of moral rights protections for creators of copyright works in the United States. Their scholarship has focused on defining a moral rights agenda that comports with American constitutional values, as well as being practically suited to current copyright business practices. Much of this scholarship has prioritized a right of attribution over other moral rights, such as the right of integrity. This Article evaluates some of these recent moral rights models in light of a sample of comments made by American supernatural fiction authors about their works. The Author questions whether the …

Not That There’S Anything Wrong With That: Imputations Of Homosexuality And The Normative Structure Of Defamation Law, Matthew D. Bunker *, Drew E. Shenkman **, Charles D. Tobin ***

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Technical Knockout: How Mixed Martial Arts Will Change Copyright Enforcement On The Web, Keith Black

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Huddle Up: Using Mediation To Help Settle The National Football League Labor Dispute, Jeremy Corapi

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Finding A Home For Orphans: Google Book Search And Orphan Works Law In The United States And Europe, Katharina De La Durantaye

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The Google Books case and its proposed settlement have provoked heated debate. Objections to the settlement proposals have come from virtually all sides—from Google’s competitors to public interest organizations, state attorneys general, the U.S. Department of Justice, and even foreign countries such as France and Germany. While it is impossible to know what the terms of the final settlement will be, it is already clear that one of the settlement’s most important consequences will be how it changes the orphan works debate, both in the United States and in Europe. This Article argues that the Google Books case offers an …

Clear But Unconvincing: The Federal Circuit's Invalidity Standard, David O. Taylor

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The Federal Circuit’s standard for proving invalidity of patent claims is clear. The Federal Circuit always requires clear and convincing evidence to prove that a patent claim is invalid. The rationale behind this standard, however, is unconvincing. There are significant reasons to believe that the Patent Office rarely considers the most relevant prior art and that, instead, alleged infringers often find prior art that is more relevant than the prior art considered by the Patent Office. It defies logic to apply the clear and convincing burden where the Patent Office considered only prior art that is less relevant than the …

Twittergate: Rethinking The Casting Director Contract, Carter Anne Mcgowan

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Copyright Enforcement In The Cloud, Marc Aaron Melzer

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Creative Commons: America's Moral Rights?, Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article examines the status of authors' moral rights in a post-Dastar world. It argues that, apart from the minimal recognition of moral rights for visual artists in the Visual Artists Rights Act (1990) and a handful of state laws, Creative Commons and other open access movements currently represent the only effective recognition of moral rights in the United States. This paper examines approaches to moral rights in a variety of open-access scenarios, including Creative Commons, free software, Wikipedia, and Google Books, and it attempts to assess the advantages and dangers of offering moral rights as an alternative to regular …

The Fate Of Indecency? The Constitutional Issue Presented By Fox Television Stations, Inc. V. Federal Communications Commission, Francis Marsico Iii

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Revisiting The Doctrine Of Inequitable Conduct Before The Patent And Trademark Office, Christian Mammen

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

I would like to thank the editors of Fordham's Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal for including the very important subject of inequitable conduct reform in this Symposium. And I'd particularly like to commend them for their impeccable timing; this Symposium is being held on the Friday before oral arguments in the Federal Circuit's en banc rehearing of the inequitable conduct issues in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson and Co.'

As many of you know, it has been over twenty years since the Federal Circuit last convened en banc to address the inequitable conduct doctrine in Kingsdown Medical Consultants, …

Towards Symmetry In The Law Of Branding, Rebecca Tushnet

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Companies sometimes want to abandon an old identity and rebrand with a new one. Trademark law probably does not have much to say about rebranding in itself. But we should be careful about how we think about rebranding and other undisclosed source relationships because, if not handled properly, law’s recognition of such techniques could end up reinforcing trademark owners’ ability to deter competition and control free speech.

Sampling, Looping, And Mashing... Oh My!: How Hip Hop Music Is Scratching More Than The Surface Of Copyright Law, Tonya M. Evans

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This article examines the deleterious impact of copyright law on music creation. It highlights hip hop music as an example of a genre significantly and negatively impacted by 1) the per se infringement rule applied in some instances to cases involving unauthorized sampling of sound recordings; and 2) traditional (and arguably erroneous) assumptions in copyright law and policy of independent creation and Romantic authorship. For decades hip hop producers have relied on the innovative use of existing recordings (most of which are protected by copyright), to create completely new works. Specifically, cuttin’ and scratchin’, digital sampling, looping and (most recently) …

Patent Settlements, Risk, And Competition, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

PowerPoint presentation delivered at the session, Patent Settlements: The Issues Beyond the "Reverse Payment" Cases at the ABA 59th Annual Antitrust Spring Meeting, March 30, 2011.

The Ethics Of Unbranding, Jeremy N. Sheff

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Essay explores the ethical implications of the phenomenon of "unbranding" that has recently been discussed in popular and scholarly literature. It compares two extant definitions of unbranding and examines each under alternative ethical theories of trademark law, specifically deontological and consequentialist theories. With respect to each of these theories, the Essay examines the ethical questions raised by the existence of asymmetric information between brand owners and consumers. This includes asymmetries not only with regard to information about products, but also with regard to information about consumer decision-making processes. The latter asymmetry presents conflicts between deontological and consequentialist conclusions regarding …

Tacit Knowledge Transfer With Patent Law: Exploring Clean Technology Transfers, Margaret Mcinerney

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.