Law Commons^™

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 …

Music As A Matter Of Law, Joseph P. Fishman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What is a musical work? Philosophers debate it, but for judges the answer has long been simple: music means melody. Though few recognize it today, that answer goes all the way back to the birth of music copyright litigation in the nineteenth century. Courts adopted the era’s dominant aesthetic view identifying melody as the site of originality and, consequently, the litmus test for similarity. Surprisingly, music’s single-element test has persisted as an anomaly within the modern copyright system, where typically multiple features of eligible subject matter are eligible for protection. Yet things are now changing. Recent judicial decisions are beginning …

Brief Of Intellectual Property Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Westerngeco Llc V. Ion Geophysical Corp., No. 16-1011, Us Supreme Court, Timothy R. Holbrook, Ann Bartow, Dan L. Burk, Donald P. Harris, David C. Hricik, Amy L. Landers, Yvette Joy Liebesman, Lee Ann W. Lockridge, Jason Rantanen

All Faculty Scholarship

This amici curiae brief was filed on behalf of Intellectual Property Law Scholars in WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp. in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question presented is:

"Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred in holding that lost profits arising from prohibited combinations occurring outside of the United States are categorically unavailable in cases in which patent infringement is proven under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)."

In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 136 S. Ct. 2090 (2016), the Supreme Court articulated a two-step method for assessing the extraterritorial reach of a US statute:

1. …