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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Costs Of Trademarking Dolls, Jessica Silbey
The Costs Of Trademarking Dolls, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Curtin’s article, Zombie Cinderella and the Undead Public Domain, takes a recent case from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) as the basis for an argument that trademark doctrine needs stronger protection against the exclusive commercial appropriation of characters that are in the public domain. In that case, a doll manufacturer sought to register the term “Zombie Cinderella” for a doll that was zombie-ish and princess-like. The examiner refused registration because the term “Zombie Cinderella” for this kind of doll was confusingly similar to the mark for Walt Disney’s Cinderella doll. Although the TTAB overturned the examiner’s …
The Biopolitical Public Domain: The Legal Construction Of The Surveillance Economy, Julie E. Cohen
The Biopolitical Public Domain: The Legal Construction Of The Surveillance Economy, Julie E. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Within the political economy of informational capitalism, commercial surveillance practices are tools for resource extraction. That process requires an enabling legal construct, which this essay identifies and explores. Contemporary practices of personal information processing constitute a new type of public domain — a repository of raw materials that are there for the taking and that are framed as inputs to particular types of productive activity. As a legal construct, the biopolitical public domain shapes practices of appropriation and use of personal information in two complementary and interrelated ways. First, it constitutes personal information as available and potentially valuable: as a …
1976 - Mexican-American Land Tenure Conflict In California, David Hornbeck
1976 - Mexican-American Land Tenure Conflict In California, David Hornbeck
Overview of California Private Land Claims and the Public Domain
This paper examines the merging of the Mexican and American land tenure systems and how the two very different concepts of land acquisition, organization and maintenance clashed resulting in a distinctive settlement pattern not usually associated with Anglo settlement. The Mexican landscape, organized according to centuries of Spanish tradition, was the antithesis of the type established by the westward moving American pioneer. Spatial differences were many, particularly in the areas of agriculture, settlement, transportation, space economy and land tenure.
1976 - Mexican-American Land Tenure Conflict In California, David Hornbeck
1976 - Mexican-American Land Tenure Conflict In California, David Hornbeck
Miscellaneous Documents and Reports
This paper examines the merging of the Mexican and American land tenure systems and how the two very different concepts of land acquisition, organization and maintenance clashed resulting in a distinctive settlement pattern not usually associated with Anglo settlement. The Mexican landscape, organized according to centuries of Spanish tradition, was the antithesis of the type established by the westward moving American pioneer. Spatial differences were many, particularly in the areas of agriculture, settlement, transportation, space economy and land tenure.
1979 - The Patenting Of California's Private Land Claims, 1851-1885, David Hornbeck
1979 - The Patenting Of California's Private Land Claims, 1851-1885, David Hornbeck
Overview of California Private Land Claims and the Public Domain
This paper examines the basis of the land-tenure conflict, its resolution, and the subsequent patenting of 482 private land claims that covered a total of 8.5 million acres of land in California. The problem of distinguishing between Mexican land grants and the American public domain was not one that time would easily resolve.
Beyond Copyright: Applying A Radical Idea--Expression Dichotomy To The Ownership Of Fictional Characters, Tze Ping Lim
Beyond Copyright: Applying A Radical Idea--Expression Dichotomy To The Ownership Of Fictional Characters, Tze Ping Lim
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law
Copyright protection for fictional characters in the United States is expanding on an uncertain and incoherent basis. With the event of the case Towle v. DC Comics, courts have now applied three different tests to discern a character's copyrightability. Towle was a significant decision because it was the first time a US court had held that a car (the Batmobile) was a copyrightable character. Although courts have utilized the ideas-expression dichotomy to differentiate unprotectable character "ideas" from protectable character 'expressions', the dichotomy is unlikely to alleviate the law's uncertainty and incoherence. Both the US ideas-expression dichotomy and character copyrightability doctrines …
Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown
Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown
Law Librarian Scholarship
Copyright protection attaches automatically to original works you create, whether a poem, photograph, painting, song, video, or essay. Copyright limits what others can do with your creative work and protects your original work from, for example, being compiled or reused and sold for profit. If you hold the copyright—and didn’t, say, create the original work in an employment context where it may be subject to being a work for hire—you may want to allow others to use your work for particular purposes. You could individually negotiate a license granting rights to each person, which would undoubtedly take more and more …
Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown
Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown
Law Librarian Scholarship
Copyright protection attaches automatically to original works you create, whether a poem, photograph, painting, song, video, or essay. Copyright limits what others can do with your creative work and protects your original work from, for example, being compiled or reused and sold for profit. If you hold the copyright—and didn’t, say, create the original work in an employment context where it may be subject to being a work for hire—you may want to allow others to use your work for particular purposes. You could individually negotiate a license granting rights to each person, which would undoubtedly take more and more …