Law Commons^™

Explicitly Explicit: The Rogers Test And The Ninth Circuit, Daniel Jacob Wright

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Appropriate(D) Moments, Richard Chused

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

INTRODUCTION Quietly reading a book by a window in your apartment isn’t necessarily a “private” act. Many living in densely packed locations like Manhattan inevitably wonder whether eyes peering through telescopes or watching digital camera screens find them, linger for a time, capture images or generate fantasies about who and what they are. That appropriation reality popped into public view in 2013 when Martha and Matthew Foster discovered images of themselves and their children, Delaney and James, in Arne Svenson’s photography exhibition The Neighbors mounted at the Julie Saul Gallery in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. The Fosters lived in …

To Speak, Perchance To Have A Dream: The Malicious Author And Orator Estate As A Critique Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Subversion Of The First Amendment In The Era Of Notice And Takedown, Michael Bradford Patterson

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Content-Based Copyright Denial, Ned Snow

Indiana Law Journal

No principle of First Amendment law is more firmly established than the principle that government may not restrict speech based on its content. It would seem to follow, then, that Congress may not withhold copyright protection for disfavored categories of content, such as violent video games or pornography. This Article argues otherwise. This Article is the first to recognize a distinction in the scope of coverage between the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause. It claims that speech protection from government censorship does not imply speech protection from private copying. Crucially, I argue that this distinction in the scope of …

Cracking The One-Way Mirror: How Computational Politics Harms Voter Privacy, And Proposed Regulatory Solutions, Kwame N. Akosah

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of Design Patents, Ralph D. Clifford, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Design patents have been part of American law since 1842. In that time, only just over 600,000 design patents have been issued, with more than half of these being granted in the last twenty years. This quantity is dramatically fewer than the number of utility patents issued which is rapidly approaching 9,000,000 issued patents. Possibly because of the low usage of design patents over time, no case law and little literature address the constitutional issues raised by them. This article intends to overcome that shortcoming. Two constitutional aspects of design patents will be examined.

First, congressional authority to adopt the …

Nsfw: An Empirical Study Of Scandalous Trademarks, Megan M. Carpenter

Megan M Carpenter

This project is an empirical analysis of trademarks that have received rejections based on the judgment that they are “scandalous." It is the first of its kind. The Lanham Act bars registration for trademarks that are “scandalous” and “immoral.” While much has been written on the morality provisions in the Lanham Act generally, this piece is the first scholarly project that engages an empirical analysis of 2(a) rejections based on scandalousness; it contains a look behind the scenes at how the morality provisions are applied throughout the trademark registration process. We study which marks are being rejected, what evidence is …

Considering Trademark And Speech Rights Through The Lens Of Regulating Tobacco, Christine Farley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Many tobacco company trademarks, such as MARLBORO, are extremely valuable. But valuable trademarks are often vulnerable both to copyists and to parodists. Tobacco trademarks face the additional vulnerability of onerous public health regulations, which can limit their appearance and use. When tobacco companies challenge these health regulations they do so on the grounds that the regulations violate their First Amendment speech rights. The law that is applied in these challenges is well developed, clear and predictable. When tobacco companies challenge unauthorized third-party uses of their marks, the speech rights involved are dealt with in a distinctly different manner. Under trademark …

Considering Trademark And Speech Rights Through The Lens Of Regulating Tobacco, Christine Haight Farley, Kavita Devaney

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Many tobacco company trademarks, such as MARLBORO, are extremely valuable. But valuable trademarks are often vulnerable both to copyists and to parodists. Tobacco trademarks face the additional vulnerability of onerous public health regulations, which can limit their appearance and use. When tobacco companies challenge these health regulations they do so on the grounds that the regulations violate their First Amendment speech rights. The law that is applied in these challenges is well developed, clear and predictable. When tobacco companies challenge unauthorized third-party uses of their marks, the speech rights involved are dealt with in a distinctly different manner. Under trademark …

Federalism, First Amendment & Patents: The Fraud Fallacy, Robin C. Feldman

Robin C Feldman