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Full-Text Articles in Law
Comments On Preliminary Draft 4 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek
Comments On Preliminary Draft 4 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek
Faculty Scholarship
In many respects, PD4 is a helpful synthesis of the law, likely to provoke less controversy than drafts of earlier Chapters. Nevertheless, we remain concerned about this draft’s, like its predecessors’, inconsistent treatment of legal issues. As in earlier drafts, this one sometimes traverses the line between restating positive law and “improving” it. In several instances, these departures from positive law adopt policy positions we would endorse in a different kind of endeavor, such as a “Principles” project, or an acknowledged advocacy piece. But we do not believe it accurate to characterize these departures, however substantively desirable, as “restating” the …
Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
Should copyright infringement claims be treated as marketable assets? Copyright law has long emphasized the free and independent alienability of its exclusive rights. Yet, the right to sue for infringement – which copyright law grants authors in order to render its exclusive rights operational – has never been thought of as independently assignable, or indeed as the target of investments by third parties. As a result, discussions of copyright law and policy rarely consider the possibility of an acquisition or investment market emerging for actionable copyright claims and the advantages that such a market might hold for copyright’s goals, objectives, …
A License Is Not A "Contract Not To Sue": Disentangling Property And Contract In The Law Of Copyright Licenses, Christopher M. Newman
A License Is Not A "Contract Not To Sue": Disentangling Property And Contract In The Law Of Copyright Licenses, Christopher M. Newman
Christopher M Newman
The assertion that a “license” is simply a “contract not to sue” has become a commonplace in both copyright and patent law. I argue that this notion is conceptually flawed, and has become a straightjacket channeling juristic reasoning into unproductive channels. At root, a license is not a contract, but a form of property interest. It may be closely intertwined with a set of contractual relationships, but its nature and consequences cannot be satisfactorily explained from within the world of contract doctrine alone. In this article, I seek to explain the complementary but parallel roles played by property and contract …
Authors As "Licensors" Of "Informational Rights" Under U.C.C. Article 2b, Jane C. Ginsburg
Authors As "Licensors" Of "Informational Rights" Under U.C.C. Article 2b, Jane C. Ginsburg
Faculty Scholarship
U.C.C. Articles 2B of the Uniform Commercial Code was designed primarily to regulate online and mass market transactions, particularly the licensing of computer software. Its effects, however, will extend to authors of works other than computer software. This Article considers the effects Article 2B would have on dealings between those authors and the exploiters of the authors' works. By reducing procedural barriers to the formation of licenses, Article 2B would make it all too easy for an author to assent to contract terms that may heavily favor an exploiter of the author's work. On the other hand, default contract terms …
Patent Royalties As Capital Gains Under I.R.C., Section 117(A), Ruth E. Riddell
Patent Royalties As Capital Gains Under I.R.C., Section 117(A), Ruth E. Riddell
Michigan Law Review
With the incidence of high personal surtax rates, a patentee is ordinarily interested in deriving the greatest monetary return after taxes, measured in proportion to the extent of use over what he expects to be the increasingly productive life of the intangible right evidenced by his patent, without surrendering his option to reclaim the patent in event of insolvency or lack of diligence on the part of the person to whom he transfers the patent for exploitation. Although ideal for these purposes, the favorable capital gain status under section 117(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, requiring recognition of only fifty …