Law Commons^™

Internet History, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This paper outlines and analyzes milestones in the history of the Internet. As technology advances, it presents new societal and ethical challenges. The early Internet was devised and implemented in American research units, universities, and telecommunication companies that had vision and interest in cutting-edge research. The Internet then entered into the commercial phase (1984-1989). It was facilitated by the upgrading of backbone links, the writing of new software programs, and the growing number of interconnected international networks. The author examines the massive expansion of the Internet into a global network during the 1990s when business and personal computers with different …

Slides: Adapting To Climate Change: Lessons Learnt From The Australian Water Experience, Will Fargher

Conversation with Water Management Reps from Colorado and Australia: "Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons Learned from Australia" (February 14)

Presenter: Will Fargher, National Water Commission, Australian Government

18 slides [4 have titles only and are missing images]

Creating A Plug-In Electric Vehicle Industry Cluster In Michigan: Prospects And Policy Options, Thomas P. Lyon, Russell A. Baruffi Jr.

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article seeks to examine how policy can be used strategically to foster the development of a plug-in electric vehicle ("PEV") industry cluster in Michigan. The tendency for certain industries to localize in particular regions has captured the interest of much economic research and policy discussion in recent years. The trend toward the clustering of new industries has stayed strong despite the acceleration of globalization. Attention to clusters has proven to be an enduring theme in economic development circles for nearly thirty years. Clusters generate synergies that make industrial activity greater than the sum of contributions by individual players. In …

Licensing As Digital Rights Management, From The Advent Of The Web To The Ipad, Reuven Ashtar

Reuven Ashtar

This Article deals with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provision, Section 1201, and its relationship to licensing. It argues that not all digital locks and contractual notices qualify for legal protection under Section 1201, and attributes the courts’ indiscriminate protection of all Digital Rights Management (DRM) measures to the law’s incoherent formulation. The Article proposes a pair of filters that would enable courts to distinguish between those DRM measures that qualify for protection under Section 1201, and those that do not. The filters are shown to align with legislative intent and copyright precedent, as well as the approaches recently …

An Innovation-Centric Approach Of Telecommunications Infrastructure Regulation, Konstantinos Stylianou

Konstantinos Stylianou

This paper considers the mechanics and role of innovation in telecommunications networks, and explains how regulation can be designed to maximize innovation. To better focus on the relationship between innovation and regulation an effort is made to distinguish innovation from competition, although the two concepts are closely related, and several reasons are presented on why the fast changing, networked and technical nature of telecommunications offers a very favorable environment for innovation to thrive, as well as why innovation benefits from a large number of actors. Moreover, the paper further explains that even small players are useful in the innovation process …

Innovation Cooperation: Energy Biosciences And Law, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This Article analyzes the development and dissemination of environmentally sound technologies that can address climate change. Climate change poses catastrophic health and security risks on a global scale. Universities, individual innovators, private firms, civil society, governments, and the United Nations can unite in the common goal to address climate change. This Article recommends means by which legal, scientific, engineering, and a host of other public and private actors can bring environmentally sound innovation into widespread use to achieve sustainable development. In particular, universities can facilitate this collaboration by fostering global innovation and diffusion networks.

Energy Revolution And Disaster Response In The Face Of Climate Change, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Nuclear meltdown in Japan and civil society strife across the Middle East highlight the degree to which resilience is core to international peace and security. This article considers the means by which communities can become increasingly resilient through shared best practices across a range of climate change measures.

Patents As Escalators, Amelia S. Rinehart

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

High technology companies commit time, effort, and resources to innovation. Over the course of a research and development project, an innovative company may face several sequential decisions regarding whether to continue to invest in the project and whether to commercialize the discoveries that have been made. Companies often seek patents early in the research and development process to receive the right to exclude others from practicing the invention. Given a current trend toward earlier and earlier patent filing, several scholars suggest that this strategy could leave many inventions underdeveloped; companies may treat patents like real options, deciding later where to …

Introduction To Creation Without Restraint: Promoting Liberty And Rivalry In Innovation, Christina Bohannan, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This document contains the table of contents, introduction, and a brief description of Christina Bohannan & Herbert Hovenkamp, Creation without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation (Oxford 2011).

Promoting rivalry in innovation requires a fusion of legal policies drawn from patent, copyright, and antitrust law, as well as economics and other disciplines. Creation Without Restraint looks first at the relationship between markets and innovation, noting that innovation occurs most in moderately competitive markets and that small actors are more likely to be truly creative innovators. Then we examine the problem of connected and complementary relationships, a dominant feature of …

Antitrust And Innovation: Where We Are And Where We Should Be Going, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

For large parts of their history intellectual property law and antitrust law have worked so as to undermine innovation competition by protecting too much. Antitrust policy often reflected exaggerated fears of competitive harm, and responded by developing overly protective rules that shielded inefficient businesses from competition at the expense of consumers. By the same token, the IP laws have often undermined rather than promoted innovation by granting IP holders rights far beyond what is necessary to create appropriate incentives to innovate.

Perhaps the biggest intellectual change in recent decades is that we have come to see patents less as a …