Law Commons^™

Copyright--My Story: A One-Woman Play, Corey Field

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Promise And Peril Of Collective Listening, Whitney Broussard

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Digital-Age Claims For Old-World Rights, Joseph M. Beck, Allison M. Scott

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Symposium Introduction, Bertis Downs

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Exclusive Groove: How Modern Substantial Similarity Law Invites Attenuated Infringement Claims At The Expense Of Innovation And Sustainability In The Music Industry, Mark Kuivila

University of Miami Law Review

As of 2015, the American entertainment market was worth about $600 billion, and it is projected to substantially exceed that figure in coming years. The global entertainment industry is worth about $2 trillion, meaning the U.S. is responsible for over a quarter of total global entertainment revenue. These statistics illustrate the staggering impact of the American entertainment industry on the global markets for film, television, and music. The American music industry is particularly dominant in its global market, earning half of world-wide sync revenues and accounting for nearly a third of all global music revenue. Entertainment is clearly the United …

A Comparative Law Perspective On Intermediaries' Direct Liability In Cloud Computing Context -- A Proposal For China, Shi Xu

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is motivated by two questions: How does the emergence of cloud-computing technology impact major countries’ copyright law regarding the issue of intermediaries’ direct liability? What should Chinese legislature body learn from those countries regarding this issue? Answering the first question lays a foundation for answering the second question.

Usually, a cloud-computing intermediary’s specific activity may possess risk of violating a copyright holder’s right of reproduction, right of communication to the public and right of distribution. Comparatively, that intermediary can raise defenses under the exhaustion doctrine and the fair use doctrine. Analysis on these two topics consists of two …

Judging Expertise In Copyright Law, William K. Ford

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

A Panoptic Approach To Information Policy: Utilizing A More Balanced Theory Of Property In Order To Ensure The Existence Of A Prodigious Public Domain, Christine D. Galbraith

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Innovation Heuristics: Experiments On Sequential Creativity In Intellectual Property, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Indiana Law Journal

All creativity and innovation build on existing ideas. Authors and inventors copy, adapt, improve, interpret, and refine the ideas that have come before them. The central task of intellectual property (IP) law is regulating this sequential innovation to ensure that initial creators and subsequent creators receive the appropriate sets of incentives. Although many scholars have applied the tools of economic analysis to consider whether IP law is successful in encouraging cumulative innovation, that work has rested on a set of untested assumptions about creators’ behavior. This Article reports four novel creativity experiments that begin to test those assumptions. In particular, …

A Fresh Look At Copyright On Campus, Jacob H. Rooksby

Missouri Law Review

This Article reviews developments in these three areas of higher education through the lens of copyright, examining, in particular, the copyright ownership – as opposed to use – questions they present. In these emerging contexts, institutional claims to copyright often work to the detriment of students, faculty, and the public. Also harmful are campus copyright policies that are ambiguously worded or inappropriately purport to vest ownership interests in colleges and universities.

“Going Viral” By Stealing Content: Can The Law Cure The Problem Of Viral Content Farming?, Sara Gates

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Part I introduces the concept of viral content farming, examines its origins, points out how it differs from aggregation, and consid-ers the purpose behind the practice. The Part looks at how compa-nies such as Google and Facebook have responded, and examines the overall impact on journalism and the Internet. Part II presents a possible ethical solution within the journalism industry and consid-ers resolutions in the law by describing the “hot news” misappro-priation doctrine and copyright law. Part III scrutinizes three pro-posals and discusses why copyright law is the most appropriate solution to the problem, then analyzes content farming within the …

A Comparison Of Ontario's Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act And The Canadian Copyright Act: Compliance, Enforcement, Risks, And The Implications For Ontario Community Colleges, Meaghan Shannon

Master of Studies in Law Research Papers Repository

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [AODA] confers rights of accessibility by detailing how individuals and organizations offering goods and services should comply and monitoring compliance through the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario. By contrast, the federal Copyright Act confers rights upon authors and other rights owners without detailing how users of works and other materials can achieve compliance with the Act and without establishing an administrative body to monitor compliance. This research, through a case study of a community college, compares and contrasts the implications of the two different legislative styles in terms of the risks borne by affected …

Copyright And Contract Law: Economic Theory Of Copyright Contracts, Richard Watt

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Contract Law: Regulating Creator Contracts: The State Of The Art And A Research Agenda, Martin Kretschmer

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

How Oracle Erred: Functionality, Useful Articles, And The Future Of Computer Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In Oracle v. Google (2015), the Federal Circuit addressed whether the " method header " components of a dominant computer program were uncopyrightable as " merging " with the headers' ideas or function. Google had copied the headers to ease the ability of third-party programmers to interact with Google's Android platform. The court rebuffed the copyrightability challenge; it reasoned that because the plaintiff's expression might have been written in alternative forms, there was no " merger " of idea and expression. But the Oracle court may have been asking the wrong question. In Lotus v. Borland (1995), the owner of …

Give Me Liberty And Give Me Death: The Conflict Between Copyright Law And Estates Law, Michael Rosenbloum

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Brief Amicus Curiae Of Copyright Law Professors In Lotus Development Corp. V. Borland International, Inc., Pamela Samuelson

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The End Of The Work As We Know It, Michael J. Madison

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Common Knowledge: Epistemology And The Beginnings Of Copyright Law, Jonathan Scott Enderle

Scholarship at Penn Libraries

Literary critics’ engagement with copyright law has often emphasized ontological questions about the relation between idealized texts and their material embodiments. This essay turns toward a different set of questions—about the role of texts in the communication of knowledge. Developing an alternative intellectual genealogy of copyright law grounded in the eighteenth-century contest between innatism and empiricism, I argue that jurists like William Blackstone and poets like Edward Young drew on Locke’s theories of ideas to articulate a new understanding of writing as uncommunicative expression. Innatists understood texts as tools that could enable transparent communication through a shared stock of innate …

Brands, Competition Law And Ip, Maurice Stucke

UTK Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rants And Raves: Craigslist's Attempt To Stop Innovating Third-Party Web Developers With Copyright Law, Stephanie Marie Davies

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The End Of Ownership: Personal Property In The Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz

Books

An argument for retaining the notion of personal property in the products we “buy” in the digital marketplace.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put in on the shelf, lend it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the ebooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that …

3d Printing: Digital Infringement & Digital Regulation, Tabrez Ebrahim

Faculty Articles

3D printing is a rapidly-growing technology that enables creating of three-dimensional solid objects made from a digital CAD file. Patent law issues are particularly relevant and also uncertain still in the realm of 3D printing. Thus, analysis of the Patent Act is needed to better understand direct infringement (of either the use of a 3D printer, of a CAD file, or under the doctrine of equivalents), indirect infringement, and contributory infringement in the context of 3D printing. A key issue in this analysis is whether a CAD file should be viewed as making the object itself, since 3D printing involves …

Government As Owner Of Intellectual Property? Considerations For Public Welfare In The Era Of Big Data, Ruth L. Okediji

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Open government data policies have become a significant part of innovation strategies in many countries, allowing access, use and re-use of government data to improve government transparency, foster civic engagement, and expand opportunities for the creation of new products and services. Rarely, however, do open data policies address intellectual property rights that may arise from free access to government data. Ownership of knowledge goods created from big data is governed by the default rules of intellectual property laws which typically vest ownership in the creator/inventor. By allowing, and in some cases actively encouraging, private capture of the downstream goods created …

Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, Dave Fagundes

Articles

Numerous recent cases illustrate that copyright owners sue for infringement even when an unauthorized use of their work causes them no economic harm. This presents a puzzle from the perspective of copyright theory as well as a serious social problem, since infringement suits designed to remedy non-economic harms tend to stifle rather than encourage creative production. While much scholarship has critiqued copyright’s economic theory from the perspective of authors’ incentives to create, ours is the first to explore this issue from the perspective of owners’ motivations to sue for infringement. We turn to moral psychology, and in particular to moral …

Copyright And Good Faith Purchasers, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Good faith purchasers for value – individuals who unknowingly and in good faith purchase property from a seller whose own actions in obtaining the property are of questionable legality – have long obtained special protection under the common law. Despite the seller’s own actions being tainted, these purchasers obtain valid title and are free to transfer the property without restriction. Modern copyright law, however, does just the opposite. Individuals who unknowingly, and in good faith, purchase property embodying an unauthorized copy of a protected work are altogether precluded from subsequently alienating such property without running afoul of copyright’s distribution right. …

A Theory Of Copyright Authorship, Christopher Buccafusco

Articles

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to grant rights to “Authors” for their “Writings.” Despite the centrality of these terms to copyright jurisprudence, neither the courts nor scholars have provided coherent theories about what makes a person an author or what makes a thing a writing. This article articulates and defends a theory of copyrightable authorship. It argues that authorship involves the intentional creation of mental effects in an audience. A writing, then, is any fixed medium capable of producing mental effects. According to this theory, copyright may attach to the original, fixed, and minimally creative form or manner …

The Most Moral Of Rights: The Right To Be Recognized As The Author Of One's Work, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to secure for limited times the exclusive right of authors to their writings. Curiously, those rights, as enacted in our copyright laws, have not included a general right to be recognized as the author of one's writings. Yet, the interest in being identified with one's work is fundamental, whatever the conception of the philosophical or policy basis for copyright. The basic fairness of giving credit where it is due advances both the author-regarding and the public regarding aspects of copyright.

Most national copyright laws guarantee the right of attribution (or “paternity”); the leading international copyright …