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Full-Text Articles in Law

Inventing Norms, William Hubbard Dec 2011

Inventing Norms, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Patent law strives to promote the progress of technology by encouraging invention. Traditionally, scholars contend that patent law achieves this goal by creating financial incentives to invent in the form of exclusive rights to new technology. This traditional view of invention, however, fails to recognize that inventors are motivated by more than money. Like most people, inventors are also motivated by social norms, that is, shared normative beliefs favoring certain actions while disfavoring others. This Article argues that many Americans embrace social norms that favor and encourage successful invention. Because of these "inventing norms" inventors enjoy enhanced personal satisfaction and …


Vut V Wilson, Uwa V Gray And University Intellectual Property Policies, William Van Caenegem Sep 2011

Vut V Wilson, Uwa V Gray And University Intellectual Property Policies, William Van Caenegem

William Van Caenegem

In Wilson and Gray the respective university intellectual property policies were held to be ineffective. The Federal Court therefore had to examine the default law concerning academic ownership of inventions. The trial judge in Wilson accepted that inventions that were a normal incident of the kind of research a particular academic was engaged to perform may belong to the employing university. However, French J and the Full Court in Gray emphasised that academic autonomy, duty to publish and freedom to collaborate with outsiders set academics apart. Employer ownership of inventions is therefore not to be implied into standard academic employment …


The Ftc’S Proposal For Regulating Ip Through Ssos Would Replace Private Coordination With Government Hold-Up, F. Scott Kieff, Richard Epstein, Daniel Spulber Aug 2011

The Ftc’S Proposal For Regulating Ip Through Ssos Would Replace Private Coordination With Government Hold-Up, F. Scott Kieff, Richard Epstein, Daniel Spulber

F. Scott Kieff

In its recent report entitled “The Evolving IP Marketplace,” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advances a far-reaching regulatory approach (Proposal) whose likely effect would be to distort the operation of the intellectual property (IP) marketplace in ways that will hamper the innovation and commercialization of new technologies. The gist of the FTC Proposal is to rely on highly non-standard and misguided definitions of economic terms of art such as “ex ante” and “hold-up,” while urging new inefficient rules for calculating damages for patent infringement. Stripped of the technicalities, the FTC Proposal would so reduce the costs of infringement by downstream …


Acta's Constitutional Problem: The Treaty That Is Not A Treaty (Or An Executive Agreement), Sean Flynn Mar 2011

Acta's Constitutional Problem: The Treaty That Is Not A Treaty (Or An Executive Agreement), Sean Flynn

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

The planned entry of the U.S. into the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) poses a unique Constitutional problem. The problem is that the President lacks constitutional authority to bind the U.S. to the agreement without congressional consent; but that lack of authority may not prevent the U.S. from being bound to the agreement under international law. If the administration succeeds in its plan, ACTA may be a binding international treaty (under international law) that is not a treaty (under U.S. Constitutional law).


Busting Blocks: Revisiting 47 U.S.C. § 230 To Address The Lack Of Effective Legal Recourse For Wrongful Inclusion In Spam Filters, Jonathan I. Ezor Jan 2011

Busting Blocks: Revisiting 47 U.S.C. § 230 To Address The Lack Of Effective Legal Recourse For Wrongful Inclusion In Spam Filters, Jonathan I. Ezor

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Consider a company that uses e-mail to conduct a majority of its business, including customer and vendor communication, marketing, and filing official documents. After conducting business in this manner for several years, one day the company discovers that its most recent e-mails were not delivered to recipients using a major Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) because the company was recently listed on an automated block list as a sender of unwanted bulk commercial e-mail (“spam”).


An Overview And The Evolution Of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), Margot E. Kaminski Jan 2011

An Overview And The Evolution Of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), Margot E. Kaminski

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a plurilateral intellectual property agreement developed outside of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), represents an attempt to introduce maximalist intellectual property standards in the international sphere, outside of existing institutional checks and balances. ACTA is primarily a copyright treaty, masquerading as a treaty that addresses dangerous medicines and defective imports. The latest ACTA draft, which is the final text available to the public before the signed text is released, contains significant shifts away from earlier draft language towards more moderate language, although it poses the same institutional problems …


The Ftc, Ip, And Ssos: Government Hold-Up Replacing Private Coordination, F. Scott Kieff, Richard A. Epstein, Daniel F. Spulber Jan 2011

The Ftc, Ip, And Ssos: Government Hold-Up Replacing Private Coordination, F. Scott Kieff, Richard A. Epstein, Daniel F. Spulber

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In its recent report entitled “The Evolving IP Marketplace,” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advances a far-reaching regulatory approach (Proposal) whose likely effect would be to distort the operation of the intellectual property (IP) marketplace in ways that will hamper the innovation and commercialization of new technologies. The gist of the FTC Proposal is to rely on highly non-standard and misguided definitions of economic terms of art such as “ex ante” and “hold-up,” while urging new inefficient rules for calculating damages for patent infringement. Stripped of the technicalities, the FTC Proposal would so reduce the costs of infringement by downstream …