Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Foreword, Deborah W. Denno, Erica Valencia-Graham

Fordham Law Review

This Foreword overviews an unprecedented Symposium on these wide ranging topics titled The New AI: The Legal and Ethical Implications of ChatGPT and Other Emerging Technologies. Hosted by the Fordham Law Review and cosponsored by Fordham University School of Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center on November 3, 2023, the Symposium brought together attorneys, judges, professors, and scientists to explore the opportunities and risks presented by AI, especially GenAI like ChatGPT. The discussion raised complex questions concerning AI sentience and personal privacy, as well as the future of legal ethics, education, and employment. Although the AI industry uniformly predicts ever more …

Now On Display: In-Line Linking In The Age Of The Server Test, Sonia Autret

Fordham Law Review

In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit adopted a new interpretation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(5), which codifies the display right of the Copyright Act of 1976. In Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, the Ninth Circuit read § 106(5) to mean that creative works made visible on web pages through in-line linking, an architectural pillar of modern web design, would not infringe on a copyright owner’s display right if the work was not actually copied onto the website’s server. Since its adoption, this approach—known as the Server Test—has been lauded by search engine providers and web …

Cracking The Code: How To Prevent Copyright Termination From Upending The Proprietary And Open Source Software Markets, Grant Emrich

Fordham Law Review

Computer software is protected by copyright law through its underlying code, which courts have interpreted as constituting a “literary work” pursuant to the Copyright Act. Prior to including software as copyrightable subject matter, Congress established a termination right which grants original authors the ability to reclaim their copyright thirty-five years after they have transferred it. Termination was intended to benefit up-and-coming authors who faced an inherent disadvantage in the market when selling the rights to their works. In the near future, many software works will reach the thirty-five-year threshold, thus presenting courts with a novel application of termination to computer …

Wild Westworld: Section 230 Of The Cda And Social Networks’ Use Of Machine-Learning Algorithms, Catherine Tremble

Fordham Law Review

This Note argues that Facebook’s services—specifically the personalization of content through machine-learning algorithms—constitute the “development” of content and as such do not qualify for § 230 immunity. This Note analyzes the evolution of § 230 jurisprudence to help inform the development of a revised framework. This framework is guided by congressional and public policy goals and creates brighter lines for technological immunity. It tailors immunity to account for user data mined by ISPs and the pervasive effect that the use of that data has on users—two issues that courts have yet to confront. This Note concludes that under the revised …

“You Must Construct Additional Pylons”: Building A Better Framework For Esports Governance, Laura L. Chao

Fordham Law Review

The popularity of “esports,” also known as “electronic sports” or competitive video gaming, has exploded in recent years and captured the attention of cord-cutting millennials—often to the detriment of sports such as basketball, football, baseball, and hockey. In the United States, the commercial dominance of such traditional sports stems from decades of regulatory support. Consequently, while esports regulation is likely to emulate many aspects of traditional sports governance, the esports industry is fraught with challenges that inhibit sophisticated ownership and capital investment. Domestic regulation is complicated by underlying intellectual property ownership and ancillary considerations such as fluctuations in a video …

It's Time For A Good Hard Look In The Mirror: The Corporate Law Example, John A. Barrett, Jr.

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Article asserts that the move from the industrial age to the

information age represents a fundamental change to our society on

such a widespread basis that the legal order must reexamine the

premises about how our society functions, assessing whether

foundational elements of U.S. Common Law remain valid. This

Article first confronts briefly the continuing acceptance of certain

foundational premises in contract and intellectual property law,

illustrating that such premises are no longer supported by the

realities of modern society. With fundamental change challenging

multiple areas of law in the information age, this problem is worthy

of widespread inquiry …