Commercial Law Commons^™

The Last Line Of A Weak Defense: The Waning Force Of The Ncaa's Procompetitive Defense Of Amateurism In § 1 Compensation Challenges, Morgan Small

American University Law Review

The Supreme Court in NCAA v. Alston determined that the NCAA’s education-related compensation restrictions violated § 1 of the Sherman Act. The Court, however, did not scrutinize the legality of the NCAA’s athletic-related compensation restrictions, begging the question: when will the Supreme Court, if ever, stop presuming the validity of the NCAA’s athletic-related compensation restrictions because they allegedly ensure that college athletics remain amateur?

This Comment examines this question in further detail by cataloging the Court’s antitrust jurisprudence involving § 1 compensation challenges and what this jurisprudence may spell for future litigation in a college athletics landscape increasingly defined by …

Color And Cultural Functionality, Felicia Caponigri

American University Law Review

Can a brand own a color? Trademark says yes, with some caveats. A brand can own a color so long as the color points to the brand as the origin of the goods and is non-functional. One of these caveats, functionality, is increasingly relevant because of color's value for our pop culture. Color is a common cultural resource, and whether it is a pink Barbiecore summer or a BRAT green summer, the colors brands remix to communicate the origins of their goods become a part of consumers' expressions of identity and their links to communities and help embody consumer values. …

Debt Tokens, Andrea Tosato, Diane Lourdes Dick, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The worlds of crypto and bankruptcy have collided. Once-prominent, fast growing, and even politically influential platforms for trading cryptocurrencies have imploded spectacularly. Gone are the glossy advertisements, celebrity endorsements, and proclamations that blockchain operates as a law unto itself. Instead, insolvent crypto businesses—including the crypto exchange giant FTX—find themselves in bankruptcy court, no different from any other failed enterprise. These bankruptcies reveal a startling reality: individual investors who placed their trust in these platforms have been stripped of their digital assets. In their stead, they hold hard-to-collect claims against these defunct platforms. Amid the chill of the crypto winter, bankruptcy …

Texas, Delaware, And The New Controller Primacy, Christine Hurt

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In January 2024, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc., initiated the process of moving Tesla’s state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas, citing concerns over Delaware corporate law. The move sparked discussions about the dominance of Delaware corporate law and its recent rulings, with critics accusing Court of Chancery judges of favoring shareholder interests over controller innovation and managerial discretion.

The shift away from Delaware is set against a backdrop of increasing judicial scrutiny in the Delaware Court of Chancery, where plaintiffs have recently seen successes in litigation against controlling shareholders, corporate directors, and officers. Concerns over Delaware’s evolving legal …

Celebrity Trademark Overload: The Rising Issue Of Excessive Registrations And Reverse Confusion, Lola-Marie Pyros

Touro Law Review

Celebrities use trademark law not only to protect their brands, but also to stake claims on a vast range of potential marks through intent to use (“ITU”) applications—often before any real commercial plan exists. This practice allows celebrities to reserve rights ranging from viral catchphrases to their children’s names which crowds the trademark register, delays legitimate filings by smaller businesses, and forces challengers into costly legal battles. A separate but equally troubling issue arises when a celebrity’s brand overshadows a preexisting weaker mark. In “reverse confusion” cases, courts often focus on whether the celebrity acted willfully, ignoring the fact that …

Design Matters: Modernizing The Federal Arbitration Act To Safeguard Party Autonomy, Sarah R. Cole

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Arbitration is a creature of contract. And it is basic arbitration law that arbitrators must respect contracting parties’ intent. The Federal Arbitration Act’s 100th anniversary offers an ideal moment to reaffirm this principle: arbitrators resolving commercial disputes should honor parties’ intent while preserving arbitration’s core values: efficiency, finality, and autonomy. Unfortunately, routine judicial deference to arbitration decisions often undermines parties’ intent as expressed through party design of the arbitration process. In response to this issue, this Article proposes amending the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to empower courts to safeguard two common arbitral party directives: limits on arbitrators’ remedial authority and …

Shareholder Litigation In Delaware: An Empirical Investigation, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas, Lynn Bai

Faculty Scholarship

The empirical study of shareholder litigation in state courts is a seriously underexamined subject. To remedy this gap, we collected data on all 4,741 fiduciary duty complaints filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery over a sixteen-year period, from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2019. After removing the duplicative cases consolidated into a lead complaint, the number of unique complaints was reduced to 2,958 in our dataset. In our coding, we examined over one hundred variables (with many variables being further subdivided into as many as eight subvariables) for each of these cases, including information about the parties, claims, …

Virtual Currency As Real Currency, Jeffrey A. Maine

Faculty Publications

Convertible virtual currency is increasingly equated with the notion of real currency. Indeed, the increased acceptance of virtual currency as a payment method among retailers and consumers, the evolution of new types of virtual currency that alleviate price volatility, and the recent expansion of foreign country initiatives confirm the strong trajectory toward virtual currency’s function as a transactional currency. Yet, the tax system continues to classify all forms of virtual currency as “property,” and not “currency,” which results in immediate taxation every time someone buys something with virtual currency. This Article argues that the adopted tax treatment of virtual currency …

Delaware Supreme Court Rules That Officer Exculpation Amendments Do Not Require Separate Class Vote Of Non-Voting Shares, Robert S. Reder, Ricky Bayon-Barrera

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Before 2022, Section 102(b)(7) of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the "DGCL") permitted corporations, via amendments to their corporate charters, to exculpate corporate directors from personal liability for breaches of their duty of care ("& 102(b)(7)"). Delaware amended & 102(b)(7) in 2022 to allow corporations to extend exculpation to officers (the "2022 Amendment").

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Values-Ambiguous Clinics, Willow Tracy

Scholarly Works

As law school clinical programs have grown in recent decades, many of the newer offerings focus on business law, entrepreneurship, intellectualproperty, and technology. It is commonly presumed that social justice values, such as the amelioration ofpoverty or theprotection offundamental rights, are notfoundational goals of these non-traditional clinics. This Article calls these clinics "values-ambiguous" to highlight the frequent uncertainty and skepticism about their relationship to traditional clinical social justice values. Importantly, "values-ambiguous"does not describe a quality of the clinic itself it describes a quality ofperception of the clinic. In other words, "values-ambiguous clinics" are clinics that are typically not perceived as …

Corporate Personhood, Corporate Rights, And The Contingency Of Corporate Law, Christopher Bruner

Scholarly Works

Corporate personhood and corporate rights are co-constitutive in nature, meaning that they are mutually constructed – there is no singular, one-way causal path between a conception of corporate personhood and a conception of corporate rights. Consequently, modes of reasoning that purport to deduce the substance and extent of corporate rights from the mere fact of corporate personhood are logically circular. Although the relationship between corporate personhood and corporate rights is real and significant, this relationship cannot, in and of itself, comprehensively specify the content of corporate rights; their substance can only be specified by reference to external normative criteria. The …

Adding A Data Disclosure Requirement To The Faa: An Overdue Reform, Richard Frankel

American University Business Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics are transforming almost every sector of society. The field of dispute resolution is no exception to this trend. Lawyers in emerging disputes are hungry for data about arbitrators and judges, prior decisions, similar disputes, and anything else they can get their hands on.

Towards The Faa's Next Century: Clarifying Disclosure Requirements In Arbitration, Andrea K. Schneider, Brian Farkas

American University Business Law Review

In the summer of 2024, all eyes were on Paris. Thousands of athletes from over 200 countries competed in over 300 sports. The Olympics is nationalism at its healthiest: cheering for one's own nation, while recognizing the fundamentally transnational human values of pluralism, diversity, and aspiration.

Facilitating Trust Arbitration By Amending The Federal Arbitration Act, S. I. Strong

American University Business Law Review

Over the last few years, a new dispute resolution procedure has burst onto the domestic and international stage: trust arbitration, which allows an arbitration provision located in a trust to trigger arbitration of "internal" trust disputes arising either between trust beneficiaries or between beneficiaries and the trustee.

An Organizational Theory Of Corporate Law, Emilie Aguirre, Julie Yen, Julie Battilana

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate law is in a moment of vibrant and contentious discussions about potential reforms. As firms exit Delaware, passive investment predominates, private equity expands, and public markets decline, corporate law faces a growing set of challenges that threaten its stability and efficacy. At the same time, the world faces pressing crises, including climate change, social and economic inequalities, and threats to democracy, though corporate law scholars typically consider these crises to be outside corporate law’s remit.

In this Article, we argue that to understand and address the multidimensional crises that face both corporate law and society, we must address shortcomings …

Emortgage And Crypto-Mortgage In Home Finance, Julia Patterson Forrester Rogers

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Most home mortgage loans today are documented on physical paper, but they are increasingly closed as eMortgages. The move to electronic documents is inevitable and will ultimately be a positive change for lenders and borrowers. However, additional regulation is needed to address issues raised by electronic home mortgage closings and the “crypto-mortgage,” a mortgage loan with the obligation evidenced by or tethered to a non-fungible token.

Lenders have traditionally required that home mortgage loans be evidenced by a wet-signed paper promissory note to gain the advantages and the certainty of Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) governing negotiable …

The Overlooked Reality Of Shareholder Activism In China: Defying Western Expectations, Chun Zhou, Wei Zhang, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Despite shareholder activism being in the global spotlight, shareholder activism in China – the world’s second largest economy – remains largely a black box. Using unique hand collected data, we reveal the overlooked reality that shareholder activism in China is thriving – with 156 major shareholder activist campaigns, over two-thirds of which have occurred in the last five years. Contrary to Western conventional wisdom, we find that whether the target company is a private owned enterprise (POE) or state-owned enterprise (SOE), has no statistically significant effect on the success of activist campaigns. Private shareholders have undertaken, and in over half …

Towards The Faa's Next Century: Clarifying Disclosure Requirements In Arbitration, Andrea K. Schneider, Brian Farkas

Articles

This essay provides a roadmap to the current landscape of neutrality and disclosure. It then suggests three possible reforms to the FAA that would provide better guidance to arbitrators, parties, and courts. Moreover, this essay argues that if the FAA cannot be sufficiently amended, states should take the lead. States can continue to more clearly outline disclosure requirements and enforce clearer standards than the current version of the FAA.

Fixing Double Patenting, Mark A. Lemley, Lisa Ouellette

American University Law Review

The U.S. patent doctrine of "double patenting" allows an inventor to obtain many patents on obvious variants of the same invention as long as they file a "terminal disclaimer" agreeing that all of these patents will expire simultaneously. Two recent limitations on double patenting practice have led

to vigorous protest from the patent bar. First, the Federal Circuit held in In re Cellect that patents tied by double patenting must expire on the same day, even if one of the patents has received a patent term adjustment giving it a more-than-twenty-year term. Second, the USPTO proposed a rule (since withdrawn) …

Unconstitutionil: Name, Image, And Likeness State Laws In The Postamateurism World Of College Sports, Bryan Dearinger

American University Law Review

College sports stands at its biggest inflection point in a century. Amateurism is almost dead, and the ability to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) is here to stay. Scholars, lawyers, and policymakers are quick to congratulate state legislatures, criticize the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and propose blueprints for Congress to fix the NIL regime in college athletics. But the incentives for dismantling the old regime are not shared between schools and the NCAA, so nothing happens. A collective action problem exists in the NIL space. Using a commons dilemma lens, this Article argues why NIL laws …

Uncorking The Twenty-First Amendment: A Spirited Exception To Distill The Dormant Commerce Clause, Lars Emerson

American University Law Review

Few goods have played as potent a role in shaping constitutional doctrine as alcohol. By repealing national Prohibition and granting states sweeping authority to regulate intoxicating liquors within their borders, the Twenty-first Amendment carved out a singular exception in American constitutional law—one that has long stood in tension with the Dormant Commerce Clause (“DCC”), which prohibits states from discriminating against interstate commerce.

This Note surveys the constitutional landscape created by the Twentyfirst Amendment, beginning with a historical overview of DCC jurisprudence, the Prohibition era, and the legislative history of the Twenty-first Amendment. The analysis then focuses on the uneasy constitutional …

Arbitrator Selection Default Rules, Irene M. Ten Cate

American University Law Review

This Article makes the case for changing the default settings for the selection of arbitrators in international commercial arbitration. For three-member tribunals, the rules of most international arbitration institutions provide that each party picks an arbitrator. The institution or the co-arbitrators then select the tribunal’s president. This prescription, which parties may set aside by agreement, codifies longstanding practices and corresponds to the strong preference of international arbitration insiders. Nonetheless, I argue that arbitration rules should default toward institutional selection of all arbitrators.

Switching the default nudges parties that can’t take full advantage of the arbitrator selection game—due to inexperience, lack …

On Entityness And Takeovers: Acquisition Valuation, Theory Of The Firm, And Coase’S Error, Robert J. Rhee

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article advances a theory of entityness that theorizes the firm and its relationship to the acquisition premium. This theory is the first scholarly analysis to construct a general model of takeover valuation by integrating the modern finance theory of asset value and a corrected Coasean theory of the firm. The acquisition premium is an enigma. Acquirers must pay it. But why? Isn’t the market price tethered to fundamental value through an efficient market? This enigma reveals a key insight about firms. The theory of entityness postulates that the acquisition premium is compensation for a capitalized asset intrinsic in the …

Fighting Mass Arbitration: An Empirical Study Of The Corporate Response To Mass Arbitration And Its Implications For The Federal Arbitration Act, Richard Frankel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Mass arbitration represents the newest battleground between corporations and consumer and employee advocates over mandatory arbitration and access to justice. Companies thought they had finally won the arbitration wars after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they could insert class action bans into their arbitration clauses, bestowing companies with widespread immunity from a large swath of consumer and employee claims.

Recently, however, consumer and employee advocates have responded to class action bans by filing thousands of individual arbitration demands, which have exposed companies to millions of dollars in filing fees and resulted in large settlements. This practice has become known …