Law Commons^™

The Social Value Of Intellectual Property, Alina Ng

Journal Articles

The focus of this paper is not on how intellectual property owners can misuse intellectual property rights in harmful ways in society. Much has already been written about that topic. Instead, this paper is about how to encourage intellectual property owners, especially corporate owners, to make decisions and implement strategies about their intellectual property rights that are socially valuable and positively impactful. This paper argues that if corporate and business owners of intellectual property understand the role that their intellectual property rights can have in creating a positive social impact, the influence that they can have in the market as …

Property Rights In Cyberspace Games And Other Novel Legal Issues In Virtual Property, Peter Brown, Richard Raysman

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

A major challenge faced by the law as it struggles to keep up with advances in technology is the surprising rate at which it canters along, throwing up new varieties of disputes, new types of transactions and even new types of property. This note examines the concept of virtual property and the problems that may arise from it in the specific context of cyberspace games, as well as the ways in which such problems have been dealt with by the law in the past and how they may be better dealt with in the future. It also discusses the existing …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 11, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Role of Empirical Research

September 30-October 1, 2021

Panel 1: The Role of Empirical Research in Defining the Scope of Constitutionally Protected Property Rights: A Tribute to Been

Panel 2: The Relationship Between Eminent Domain and Social and Racial Injustice

Panel 3: The Interdependence of Property and First Amendment Rights

Panel 4: The Distributional Implications of Land Use Regulation

Of Privacy And Publicity: Symbiotic Rights (Or Wellspring Of Obfuscation), Jeffrey L. Carson, Trace Brooks

ACTEC Law Journal

This Article discusses the relationship between the rights of privacy and publicity. After reviewing the historical development of the law of privacy and publicity and the areas where privacy and publicity overlap and create a valuable, potentially descendible property right, they propose a planning strategy that can allow practitioners to help their clients preserve their commercially valuable publicity rights by utilizing Tennessee trust law.

Progress As Impact: A Contemporary View Of Copyright And Patent Clause, Alina Ng

Journal Articles

This paper argues that the incentive-welfare functions of patents and copyrights would be enhanced by embracing a more purpose-driven view of inventions and creative expressions. This paper is divided into three parts to show how conceptualizing “progress” as the betterment of society through the use of impactful intellectual property will ultimately benefit both the creator and recipient of the work so that the incentive welfare function of the law is maximized. Part I of the paper explores the concept of progress as a goal undergirding the patent and copyright systems and shows how the conventional understanding of progress as “creation” …

Property, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter discusses the nature and value of property rights. It will explain (1) what property rights are, (2) the relationship between private property and economic development, and (3) some objections to structuring societies around such rights. This discussion throughout focuses on the decentralizing nature of private property rights, asking what implications it has from a philosophical, but also social and political, point of view."

Corporations As Private Regulators, Wentong Zheng

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The growing trend of corporations imposing restrictions on suppliers, contractors, and customers beyond the requirements of existing laws requires rethinking the nature and impact of corporations’ private regulatory power. This trend, which this Article refers to as “Corporations as Private Regulators” (CPR), represents a paradigmatic shift in how corporations participate in the making of public policies. This Article conceptualizes the corporate CPR power as the exercise of a right of refusal to deal with counterparties. This right of refusal could be theorized as a new form of property right, whose allocation has important implications for both rights and wealth. The …

The Cost Of Unstable Property: Oil, Gas, And Other Confusing Mineral Interests, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

Most people think of property as a thing: a chunk of land or a piece of personal property. Most lawyers, hopefully, have a more sophisticated view and think of property as a set of rights that exists with respect to a thing and governs how one interacts with that thing vis-a-vis other people. But even that nuance is not refined enough for an oil and gas lawyer. Such a practitioner does, of course, view ownership as a set of rights, but the thing at hand is not just a piece of real property or the part of the land that …

Intellectual Property, Independent Creation, And The Lockean Commons, Mala Chatterjee

Faculty Scholarship

Copyrights and patents are differently structured intellectual property rights in different kinds of entities. Nonetheless, they are widely regarded by U.S. scholars as having the same theoretical underpinnings. Though scholars have sought to connect philosophical theories of property to intellectual property, with a particular interest in the labor theory of John Locke, these explorations have not sufficiently probed copyrights’ and patents’ doctrinal differences or their philosophical implications for the theories explored. This Article argues that a defining difference between copyrights and patents has normative significance for the framework of Lockean property theory: namely, that copyright law treats independent creation as …