Law Commons^™

The Ip Law Book Review, Vol. 8 #2, William T. Gallagher

Intellectual Property Law

THE BRANDING OF THE AMERICAN MIND: HOW UNIVERSITIES CAPTURE, MANAGE, AND MONETIZE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND WHY IT MATTERS, by Jacob Rooksby. Reviewed by Liza Vertinsky, Emory University School of Law

ILLEGAL LITERATURE: TOWARD A DISRUPTIVE CREATIVITY by David S. Roh. Reviewed by Shubha Ghosh, Syracuse University College of Law

ARTISTIC LICENSE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF COPYRIGHT AND APPROPRIATION, by Darren Hudson Hick. Reviewed by Shubha Ghosh, Syracuse University College of Law

THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF TRADEMARK TRANSACTIONS: A GLOBAL AND LOCAL OUTLOOK, edited by Irene Calboli and Jacques de Werra. Reviewed by Jake Linford, Florida State University College of …

Vol. 9 No. 2, Spring 2018; Law Is A Battlefield: Why Musicians And Politicians Both Lose With Blanket Licensing, Laura E. Schrauth

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

When musicians allege that politicians they dislike have used their music without authorization, those allegations make the news, but rarely, if ever, do those news sources mention when the politicians have purchased licenses for that music. Unsurprisingly, copyright law is never a topic of media mention. Licensing is a straightforward, nondiscriminatory procedure that allows anyone who pays the necessary fee the right to exercise the license. When it comes to political uses, however, copyright law loses in a landslide to public opinion, which dictates how vocal opponents think licenses should work without acknowledging how licenses do work. Academia can count …

The Battle To Define Asia’S Intellectual Property Law: From Tpp To Rcep, Anupam Chander, Madhavi Sunder

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A battle is under way to decide the intellectual property law for half the world’s population. A trade agreement that hopes to create a free trade area even larger than that forged by Genghis Khan will define intellectual property rules across much of Asia and the Pacific. The sixteen countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) include China, India, Japan, and South Korea, and stretch to Australia and New Zealand. A review of a leaked draft reveals a struggle largely between India on one side and South Korea and Japan on the other over the intellectual property rules that …

Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to establish the reasons why federal copyright protection was created, discuss the shifts in reasoning behind major amendments, and explore its effects on copyright holders and the public, with a slight focus on the music industry. Federal copyright has existed in the United States since the late 1700s, with the creation of the Copyright Act in 1790. Adopted from the first copyright law ever created, the English Statute of Anne (1710), the Copyright Act was meant to protect citizens from piracy in a world where the risk of such a thing was rapidly increasing. The stated objective …

Balances Of Power Between Ip Creators: Ethical Issues In Scholarly Communication, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Scholarly communications often values free access above all else, but what happens when that drive for openness conflicts with ethical issues of consent and ownership? In this CARL IG Showcase panel, members of SCORE (Scholarly Communication and Open Resources for Education) will discuss some of the thorny issues of ethics and scholarly communication, including: consent (particularly among diverse communities outside of the institution) and digital collections, students as information creators / library as publisher, and decolonizing who we consider scholars and what we consider scholarship. This panel will feature speakers who will share current discussions and personal stories on issues …

Emojis And The Law, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

Emojis are an increasingly important way we express ourselves. Though emojis may be cute and fun, their usage can lead to misunderstandings with significant legal stakes—such as whether someone should be obligated by contract, liable for sexual harassment, or sent to jail.

Our legal system has substantial experience interpreting new forms of content, so it should be equipped to handle emojis. Nevertheless, some special attributes of emojis create extra interpretative challenges. This Article identifies those attributes and proposes how courts should handle them.

One particularly troublesome interpretative challenge arises from the different ways platforms depict emojis that are nominally standardized …

Fair Or Free Use Of Copyrighted Materials In Education And Research And The Limit Of Such Use, Muhammad Masum Billah, Saleh Albarashdi

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The concept of fair use, fair dealing, or free use of copyrighted works for education and research is incorporated in copyright laws around the world. This is to strike a balance between the private interests of copyright holders and the public interests of students and researchers to use the copyrighted materials in furthering their knowledge. While fair and free use of copyrighted materials for the purpose of study and research is favored and permitted under copyright laws almost everywhere in the world, the limit of such use is not clearly defined in these laws. This Article will attempt to determine …

Parallel Novels And The Reimagining Of Literary Notables By Follow-On Authors: Copyrights Issues When Characters Are First Created By Others, Scott D. Locke

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

R. Prince's New Portraits - The Art Of Fair Use, Mathilde Halle

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

All Your Works Are Belong To Us: New Frontiers For The Derivative Work Right In Video Games, J. Remy Green

Faculty Scholarship

In copyright law, the author of an original work has the exclusive right to prepare further works derivative of that original. Video game developers’ works are protected by the Copyright Act. As video games take advantage of more advanced technology, however, players are doing more creative, interesting, and original things when they play games. Certain things players do create independent economic value and are the kinds of acts of original authorship our copyright system is designed to encourage. However, since the author of the video game is entitled to the full panoply of rights under the laws of the American …

Fair Use And Social Media, John Dettinger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

This poster was created in a collaborative effort by Musselman Library’s Copyright Committee as part of a display for Fair Use Week 2018. The poster was intended to get viewers to think about the 4 factors of fair use in the context of two art projects that used social media photos: Yolocaust by Shahak Shapira and New Portraits by Richard Prince. It was also intended to get viewers thinking about the ways their social media content might get used beyond the original intention.

What Is (And Isn't) Fair Use In Music Sampling?, Devin Mckinney

All Musselman Library Staff Works

"Fair use" is a principle embedded in copyright law which permits -- under circumstances governed by a set of considerations commonly known as "the four factors" -- the borrowing of material from copyrighted works to create new works. Created for Fair Use Week 2018, this poster highlights the principle as it has applied to three controversial cases involving music sampling. For each case, the observer is given the essential facts; shown which of the four factors (represented by icons) were most central; and told the real-world outcome of each case. As an interactive display, the poster covered each "Outcome" column …

Copyrighting The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qimron V. Shanks, David L. Cohen

Maine Law Review

In 1992, Professor Elisha Qimron of Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel, brought suit against the editors and publisher of A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a complete set of photographs of the scrolls, for copyright infringement and the tort of mental anguish asking for approximately $250,000 in damages. The case centered on an appendix of the book which included a portion of a scroll text, Misgat Ma'Aseh ha-Torah—Some Rulings Pertaining to the Torah (MMT), reconstructed by Qimron. MMT consists of 121 lines of text, and Qimron's reconstruction—referred to in the suit as the Compiled Text (CT)—consisted …

The Perfection And Priority Rules For Security Interests In Copyrights, Patents, And Trademarks: The Current Structural Dissonance And Proposed Legislative Cures, Thomas M. Ward

Maine Law Review

The structural legal dissonance that undermines the effective financing of federal intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks registrations, copyrights, and maskworks) is rooted in the prominence of title in both the early conceptual history of personal property financing and in the language of the federal tract recording acts. While genuine ownership transfers have always represented the prototype under the federal intellectual property recording statutes, transfers intended for security were also originally included because of the early judicial thinking about the importance of title to the validity (against third parties) of a “mortgage” right in intangible personal property. As products of their …

Pirate Tales From The Deep [Web]: An Exploration Of Online Copyright Infringement In The Digital Age, Nicholas C. Butland, Justin J. Sullivan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Technology has seen a boom over the last few decades, making innovative leaps that border on science fiction. With the most recent technological leap came a new frontier of intellectual property and birthed a new class of criminal: the cyber-pirate. This Article discusses cyber-piracy and its interactions and implications for modern United States copyright law. The Article explains how copyright law, unprepared for the boom, struggled to adapt as courts reconciled the widely physical perceptions of copyright with the digital information being transferred between billions of users instantaneously. The Article also explores how cyber-piracy has made, and continues to make, …

Book Review: Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, And Intellectual Property Rights In American Dance By Anthea Kraut, Carys Craig

Carys Craig

Dance may be one of the world’s oldest art forms, but it is a relatively recent entrant into the sphere of copyright law—and remains something of an afterthought amongst copyright lawyers and scholars alike. For copyright scholars, at least, that should change with the publication of Anthea Kraut’s CHOREOGRAPHING COPYRIGHT: RACE, GENDER, AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN AMERICAN DANCE. Kraut performs a fascinating exploration of the evolution of choreographic copyright—sweeping, political, polemical—that should leave no one in doubt as to the normative significance of choreography as a subject matter of copyright law and policy. Nor should doubt remain as to …

Globalizing User Rights-Talk: On Copyright Limits And Rhetorical Risks, Carys Craig

Carys Craig

Around the world, the focus of copyright policy reform debates is shifting from the protection of copyright owners’ rights towards defining their appropriate limits. There is, however, a great deal of confusion about the legal ontology of copyright “limits,” “exceptions,” “exemptions,” “defenses,” and “user rights.” While the choice of terminology may seem to be a matter of mere semantics, how we describe and conceptualize lawful uses within our copyright system has a direct bearing on how we delimit and define the scope of the owner’s control. Taking seriously the role of rhetoric in shaping law and policy, this Paper critically …

Patent Exhaustion Connects Common Law To Equity: Impression Products, Inc. V. Lexmark International, Inc., Kumiko Kitaoka

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Chasing Echos Of Obscenity Exceptionalism In Copyright: Recent Swarm Cases, James R. Alexander

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Recent district court rulings regarding copyright violations using BitTorrent file-sharing protocols to illegally download pornographic films have been numerous and largely procedural. But some have casually included language challenging the established doctrine of content neutrality in copyright, noting that obscenity exceptionalism might still be within the court’s policy discretion. This article traces these recent rulings and finds little substantive argument on behalf of exceptionalism other than its long-time understanding under common law, now abandoned. It also examines the critical early nineteenth century common law rulings considered seminal in establishing content exceptionalism in copyright and finds that current court references to …

European Parliament Resolution Of 9 July 2015 And Its Progeny: Why The Digital Age Demands A Single European Copyright Title, Kevin J. Cammiso

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Permission Impossible: An Exception-Based Legislative Solution For Digitizing Copyright-Protected Works, Connor J. Hansen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Fair Use And First Amendment: Without Fair Use, What Would You Freely Speak About?, Adam Blaier

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The question this paper tries to answer is: Without fair use, what would you freely speak about? This paper will seek to demonstrate that the Copyright Clause’s Fair Use doctrine, and the First Amendment are cousins who help each other, rather than enemies sworn to destroy each other as some believe. First I will give a brief overview and history of each doctrine. Next I will speak about three areas where I believe fair use and the First Amendment cross paths extensively. These areas are: (1) school/education; (2) social media and news; and (3) sports images/broadcasting. Finally, I will demonstrate …

Brief Of Amici Curiae - Copyright And Intellectual Property Law Professors In Support Of Defendant-Petitioner Pandora Media, Inc., Tyler T. Ochoa, Joseph C. Gratz

Faculty Publications

Brief submitted to the Supreme Court of the State of California.

Case No. S240649 FLO & EDDIE, INC., Plaintiff-Respondent, v. PANDORA MEDIA, INC., Defendant-Petitioner.

Plaintiff Flo & Eddie, Inc., contends that the phrase “exclusive ownership” in California Civil Code section 980 includes all possible uses to which a copyrightable work may be put, including an exclusive right of public performance. At the time California Civil Code section 980 was first enacted in 1872, however, the phrase “exclusive ownership” in relation to a copyrightable work meant something different and much narrower: namely, the right of first publication (reproduction and sale) only. …

A Tale Of Two Composers: An Argument For A Limited Expansion Of Moral Rights For Composers, Cassidy Grunninger

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Official Code, Locked Down: An Analysis Of Copyright As It Applies To Annotations Of State Official Codes, Shellea Diane Crochet

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Backing Down: Blurred Lines In The Standards For Analysis Of Substantial Similarity In Copyright Infringement For Musical Works, Nicholas Booth

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Oracle V. Google And The Scope Of A Computer Program Copyright, Dennis S. Karjala

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Symbols, Systems, And Software As Intellectual Property: Time For Contu, Part Ii?, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The functional nature of computer software underlies two propositions that were, until recently, fairly well settled in intellectual property law: first, that software, like other utilitarian articles, may qualify for patent protection; and second, that the scope of copyright protection for software is comparatively limited. Both propositions have become considerably shakier as a result of recent court decisions. Following Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the lower courts have invalidated many software patents as unprotectable subject matter. Meanwhile, Oracle America v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2014) extended far more expansive copyright protection …

Creativity Revisited, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

The University of New Hampshire's Scholarship Redux Conference invited a reexamination of an earlier work of IP scholarship to address what has happened in the area since the time of its original publication. As my contribution to the Conference, I revisited my 1997 article that discussed the consequences of the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence ("AI") on the production of new copyrightable or patentable works as well as the follow-up article I published in 2004 that focused expressly on copyright law. The primary call of the conference was to discuss the "legal predictions [that were] right -- or wrong!" In …

Copyright For Creators: Bridging Law And Practice, Carla-Mae Crookendale, Hillary Miller, Sue Robinson

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Everyone is a publisher, a maker, or a creator in the digital age, and understanding copyright is a foundational skill. Artists, designers, and arts scholars need acute awareness of the legal landscape and fair use. To help meet this need, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries, in concert with the VCU School of the Arts, created a series of programs on the nuances of copyright for artists, designers, and art scholars.