Law Commons^™

Private Letters And The Law: Edith Wharton’S Questions About Ownership And The Right To Publish Private Letters, Deborah Hecht

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Computer Programs Under The United States Intellectual Property System: Sui Generis Legislation Is Needed, Joseph Francis Agnelli, Iii

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Section I of this article explores the different avenues of intellectual property protection presently available for computer software here in the United States. Section II then discusses how the European Community has resolved the computer program crisis under European intellectual property law. Lastly, section III will illustrate why sui generis legislation would be the paramount way for Congress to attack the intricacy that is created by computer programs under American intellectual property law.

Federalist Society’S Intellectual Property Practice Group And Its Stanford Law School Present A Debate On Open Source And Intellectual Property Rights, Lawrence Lessig, F. Scott Kieff, G. Marcus Cole

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Transcript of the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group and its Stanford Law School Chapter debate on Open Source and Intellectual Property Rights with panelists Professor Lawrence Lessig from Stanford University and Professor F. Scott Kieff from Stanford University and moderated by Professor G. Marcus Cole from Stanford Law School. This debate took place on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 in Palo Alto, California.

Intellectual Property Rights In An Attorney’S Work Product, Ralph D. Clifford

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This paper addresses the main intellectual property consequences of practicing law and whether attorneys can prevent others from using their work-product. The article does not assume that the reader is an expert in intellectual property law; instead, it is designed to answer the types of questions practitioners have about their rights. There is one primary legal code that impacts attorneys’ rights to their work-product: the copyright law. As a broad statement, copyright law protects how an author expresses ideas. It is the system that is used to prevent others from copying a book, a movie, a musical composition, or even …

Determining The Extent Of The Work For Hire Doctrine And Its Effect On Termination Rights, Allison E. Dolzani

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stay Tuned: Whether Cloud-Based Service Providers Can Have Their Copyrighted Cake And Eat It Too, Amanda Asaro

Fordham Law Review

Copyright owners have the exclusive right to perform their works publicly and the ability to license their work to others who want to share that right. Subsections 106(4) and (5) of the Copyright Act govern this exclusive public performance right, but neither subsection elaborates on what constitutes a performance made “to the public” versus one that remains private. This lack of clarity has made it difficult for courts to apply the Copyright Act consistently, especially in the face of changing technology.

Companies like Aereo, Inc. and AereoKiller, Inc. developed novel ways to transmit content over the internet to be viewed …

The Ascendancy Of European Community Law--The Implications Of The Court Of Justice Decision In Magill On The Balance Between National And Ec Intellectual Property Law, Tanya Doherty Reagan

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Work Made For Hire -- Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan Vacca

Florida State University Law Review

Authorship of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer, not the employee, being the author and initial copyright owner. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, set forth a list of factors to distinguish employees from independent contractors. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on how to balance these factors. …

Keep Your Friends Close: A Framework For Addressing Rights To Social Media Contacts, Courtney J. Mitchel

Vanderbilt Law Review

A group of entrepreneurial recent college graduates starts a tutoring and test prep company focused on helping promising high school students get an edge on their college applications. Since the cost of print advertising exceeds the group's budget, they each actively promote the business on their personal social media accounts, garnering their first clients. They also create company accounts on Facebook, Linkedln, and Twitter, which clients join for easy, direct communication and quick access to information. Though all the founders contribute occasional posts and encourage their personal social media contacts to join the company accounts, one eventually becomes, in practice …

Digital Music Sampling And Copyright Policy - A Bittersweet Symphony? Assessing The Continued Legality Of Music Sampling In The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, And The United States, Melissa Hahn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Silent Similarity, Jessica Litman

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form—silent movies—had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases—in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures—are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. In particular, the problem at the heart …

Restoring The Balancing Test: A Better Approach To Fair Use In Copyright, Charlie Penrod

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Fair use analyses are overly vague and abstract. While the Copyright Act established four factors for courts to consider when determining if an alleged infringer’s use of copyrighted work is “fair”, these factors are not susceptible to easy interpretation. More importantly, once these factors have been interpreted, a trier of fact is instructed to balance these factors against each other. No effective method currently exists in guiding courts as to how to balance inherently disparate factors against each other, either in terms of intensity of the factors or how one factor might balance against another totally different factor. This article …

The End Of (Meta) Search Engines In Europe?, Martin Husovec

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Mourning The Loss Of Copyright's Unsung Hero: Destruction Of The First Sale Doctrine, C. Todd Mosley

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Mind-Movies: Original Authorship As Applied To Works From "Mind-Reading" Neurotechnology, Theo Austin Bruton

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

U.S. courts frequently analyze new technology under copyright law. Over the years, the courts have applied copyright law to photographic cameras, computer programs, digital video recorders, and much more. However, a recent breakthrough in the neuroscience community may force judges to apply copyright standards in an unorthodox fashion. A group of researchers at UC Berkeley devised a process that reconstructs video sequences from the human brain, essentially creating a movie from the person’s mind. As this neurotechnology develops, it is uncertain how judges will apply copyright law to content taken directly from the brain. Nevertheless, this Article argues that such …

Keeping It Under Wraps: Trade Secrecy For Offshore Asset Protection Plans, Thomas A. Brunty

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Aereo And Filmon: Technology’S Latest Copyright War And Why Aereo Should Survive, Krista Consiglio

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Aereo: Cutting The Cord Or Splitting The Circuit?, Julie Borna

CommLaw Conspectus: Journal of Communications Law and Technology Policy (1993-2015)

No abstract provided.

The Positive And Negative Consequences Of The European Union Court Of Justice's Amazon Decision On International Private Copying And America, Jaclyn Kavendek

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Narrowest And Most Obvious Limits: Applying Fair Use To Appropriation Art Economically Using A Royalty System, Brittani Everson

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief For The United States Of America

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

United States V. Martignon, Maureen A. Fitzgerald

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Anti-Competitive Music Industry And The Case For Compulsory Licensing In The Digital Distribution Of Music, Ankur Srivastava

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cash From Chaos: Sound Recording Authorship, Section 203 Recapture Rights And A New Wave Of Termination, Hector Martinez

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The thesis of this Article is that under an exclusive recording agreement entered into in the United States between a record label and recording artist on or after January 1, 1978, any key member of recording artist that signed the recording contract is a bona fide author of a sound recording for purposes of claiming standing in order to effectuate a termination of transfer of grant under Section 203 of the 1976 Copyright Act.

Part I will summarize the history of sound recordings as copyrightable subject matter. Part II will examine record industry custom and practice as it relates to …

Banksy Got Back? Problems With Chains Of Unauthorized Derivative Works And Arrangements In Cover Songs Under A Compulsory License, Matthew A. Eller

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This Article will analyze the scope of copyright ownership in relation to chains of unauthorized derivative works and chains of arrangement rights in cover versions of musical recordings. In particular, the analysis will focus on the gray area in the law where an unauthorized derivative work (“D1”) is created by an author and another author creates a second derivative work (“D2”) based off of D1. In situations such as these, does the creator of the original derivative work have any rights in their creation if their derivative work was unauthorized?

Further, depending on what rights do exist for D1, can …

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum, Volume 4, Issue 2, Spring 2014

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This issue of Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum includes articles on the modern legal issues & developments affecting fashion, the Internet, music, film, international sports, constitutional law & the lives of celebrities.

Copyright Law, Privacy, And Illegal File Sharing: Defeating A Defendant's Claims Of Privacy Invasion, Daniel Gomez-Sanchez

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Function Over Form: Bringing The Fixation Requirement Into The Modern Era, Megan Carpenter, Steven Hetcher

Fordham Law Review

This Article examines the ways that contemporary creativity challenges copyright’s fixation requirement. In this Article, we identify concrete problems with the fixation requirement, both practically and in light of the fundamental purpose and policy behind copyright law, and argue for a change that would amend the fixation requirement to better function in the modern era.

Specifically, we conclude that a fair appraisal of the justifications for the fixation requirement provides little, if any, rationale for fixation except to the extent that fixation helps to separate idea from expression in determining the “metes and bounds” of creative expression. Recent case law …

Copyright's Vicious Triangle: Returning Author Protections To Their Rational Roots, Robert Shepard

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Copyright protections encourage the production of intellectual property by temporarily restricting free public access, a constitutional design that Justice Stephen Breyer has called a “two-edged sword.” Yet, the Copyright Clause really enshrines a triangular relationship among authors, consumers, and commodifiers, a third constituency that has always interposed itself between author-creators and consumer end-users. Though the Copyright Triangle is nothing new, a fundamental reordering of these constituencies is in progress, with digital commodifiers such as Google assuming a dominant role. Though they sometimes proclaim themselves champions of free public access to culture, these commodifiers have instead aggrandized themselves at the expense …

Slaves To Copyright: Branding Human Flesh As A Tangible Medium Of Expression, Arrielle Sophia Millstein

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This Article argues why human flesh, because of its inherent properties and its necessity for human survival, should not qualify as a tangible medium of expression under the Copyright Act of 1976. Through policy concerns and property law this Article demonstrates why the fixation requirement, necessary to obtain copyright protection of a “work,” must be flexible and eliminate human flesh as an acceptable, tangible medium of expression, to avoid the disastrous risk of the court falling into the role of “21st Century judicial slave masters.”