Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Can The Law Protect My Craft? How Gaps In Copyright Of Knitting Patterns Symbolize A Greater Struggle For Protecting Traditionally Feminine Forms Of Intellectual Property, Kysa Walzer

Seattle University Law Review

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the application of intel-lectual property rights within the context of copyright protection of knit-ting patterns. The article will discuss the underutilization of copyright pro-tection for knitters and crafters and its larger impact upon craft and indus-try traditionally comprised of women. Part I introduces knitting patterns and a short history of copyright protections. Part II discusses the specific areas within knitting patterns and the knitting community which give rise to legal grey areas for copyright protection. Part III discusses the larger implications of copyright and intellectual property in spaces where women traditionally make …

A New Exclusionary Rule To Protect Bodily Integrity And Discourage Pretext Stops, Josephine Ross

Seattle University Law Review

The author proposes a novel state-level exclusionary rule to reduce racial profiling and protect bodily autonomy during police encounters. The current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to deter pretextual stops and frisks because the exclusionary rule often turns on officer fault and "good faith," allowing racially motivated practices to go unchecked. As federal rollbacks on diversity and data collection hinder efforts to track racial bias, the author argues for a statutory evidentiary rule that automatically excludes drug evidence found during (1) traffic stops, (2) pat-downs for weapons, and (3) consent searches, regardless of an officer’s intent or the legality of the …

Navahine V. HawaiʻI Dept. Of Transportation: The Keiki Will Lead Us, Catherine Smith

Seattle University Law Review

The author analyzes the landmark case Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, which culminated in the world’s first constitutional climate settlement. Catherine Smith, serving as an expert for the youth plaintiffs, situates the case within Hawaiʻi’s legal tradition of prioritizing children’s rights and intergenerational equity. She explores the evolution of children’s constitutional protections, contrasting Hawaiʻi’s progressive jurisprudence with the dominant adult-centric legal framework on the mainland. She critiques four recurring analytical missteps in U.S. courts that marginalize children’s interests and highlights Hawaiʻi’s public trust doctrine and cultural values, such as the Aloha Spirit, as models for addressing climate-related harms. …

Constitutional Futurism As Pedagogy, Jeremiah Chin

Seattle University Law Review

Constitutional Law has transformed from a course on history to a discussion of current events. Cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo reveal that the study of constitutional law is not a static, or even linear, discussion of constitutional text and history. Law is a shifting, changing enterprise that reflects social constructions of power, authority, and identity. How do we teach, learn, and understand constitutional law that is so laden with history, riddled with theories of consistency and adherence to precedent, but ultimately subject …

Redefining Child Pornography In An Age Of Technological Advancement: The Concept Of Avoidable Harm, Debra D. Burke, Christopher N. Doval

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In 2020, Netflix released on its streaming service the movie Cuties, a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant who joined a dance group. The film is a commentary against the hyper-sexualization of children and the pressure young girls face from social media and society and received a director’s award at the Sundance Film Festival. Its release, however, kicked off a culture war, prompting a movement to cancel Netflix subscriptions in response to the film’s sexually provocative imagery of young girls. The movie’s award-winning director defended the film’s message, explaining that the film was her own story, struggling as a …

Stolen Humanity On Display: Lacking Legislation For Human Remains In U.S. Museums, Sarah M. Fassio

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In museums across the United States, displays of human remains are not rarities. Yet few attendees stop to consider the provenance behind those once-living parts of our ancestors. To do so, one would have to contend with an unpleasant history rife with scientific racism and graverobbing for the personal collections of society’s upper crust. Considering the origins of such displays reveals that the labels and names attached to human remains in museums often serve more to alienate them from their humanity than they do to connect or contextualize.

Legal regulations pertaining to displayed human remains are piecemeal. There are federal …

Precise Operations, Imprecise Laws: How Nebulous Laws Wreak Havoc In Outer Space, Matthew H. Ormsbee, Harine Raaj

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

As space operations advance with unprecedented precision, the laws governing these activities remain outdated, vague, and incapable of addressing contemporary challenges. The Outer Space Treaty (OST) and the Liability Convention, drafted in the Cold War era, fail to adequately define fundamental terms such as damage, fault, and compensation. This lack of legal precision creates significant liability gaps, particularly as space debris, mega-constellations, and private-sector actors reshape the space landscape. This article explores how these ambiguities hinder legal predictability and fair compensation for victims of space-related harm. By analyzing real-world space incidents, including the Cosmos 954 reentry, the Iridium-Cosmos collision, and …

Tailoring The Law: Protecting Fashion In The Future, Imaad Huda

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article identifies how the current legal system in the United States harms fashion designers and the art they produce. It explains how fashion as an industry lacks a system of law that best fits the issues posed by design theft due to fast fashion. Fast fashion companies, through modern technology, are able to reproduce stolen designs with haste. Currently, there are a few notable cases that have spawned from design theft, but their verdicts may be limited in their ability to change policy or raise significant legal issues. This article analyzes both current federal enforcement mechanisms and design practices …

Beautiful Means For Nefarious Ends, Eric Wahoff

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

This note will attempt to address the laws of art dealers and banks in a way that draws parallels with the past struggles of banks and today’s struggle in the art world to keep bad actors out. It will begin with surveying how art is currently used as a tool of criminals and the current regulatory regimes in the EU, New York, and California – the states with the most art brokers.Then the note will analyze relevant laws from the US banking industry. Finally, the note will discuss ways that banking laws that have been used to address money -laundering …

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study Of Pragmatism And The Flaws Of “Purposeful” Decision Making In Argersinger V. Hamlin, Alisa Smith, Sarah K. Stice

Seattle University Law Review

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground …

The Race To Erase: Destruction Of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-Of-Information Laws, Frank D. Lomonte

Seattle University Law Review

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law …

When You’Re Arrested For A Felony In Seattle, You’Ll Meet Me., Austin Field

Seattle University Law Review

In this Essay, Austin Field, a practicing public defender, uses a first-person perspective to describe what it is like to meet a criminal defendant for the first time. He explains the process from start to finish, detailing everything from the way he introduces himself to how bail works.

"I’ll ask you for your name. Most of the time, you tell me. I check your name against my list. On any given day I’m supposed to interview between five and fifteen people. I have a lot of questions for you. We only have about ten minutes."

The Public Square In A Private-Property Obsessed Country: What New York City’S Pops Regulations Get Right And Why Other Cities Should (Mostly) Copy Them, Carson Mcgregor

Seattle University Law Review

When New York City (NYC) was first becoming the metropolitan monolith it is today, it had a problem: the city streets were chock full of skyscrapers, and sunlight, air, and usable open space were at a premium. In response, the City promulgated its first Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) regulations, which allowed developers to build skyward in exchange for providing public space on the street level. Unfortunately, in July of 2023, the New York Times (NYT) discovered that New Yorkers received only a fraction of what they were promised. Building owners received billions of dollars’ worth of added floor space, …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Defining Deference: Impacts Of Abandoning Chevron On Emerging Technology Governance And Administrative Law, R. Aubrey Davis Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), often lead to unforeseen legal outcomes. Notable abuses in areas such as facial recognition, employment bias, and housing discrimination are well known. However, legislative responses to these issues either have been largely reactive or there has been no legislative response at all. In lieu of legislation, agencies have sought to fill the gap. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed a rule mandating voter notification for all AI-generated political phone calls citing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 as authority. However, the TCPA was originally passed to curtail telemarketing, not …

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

The Legal Vacuum In Cognitive Privacy And Brain Data, Kayla Flanders

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

There is an entire world emerging—technology capable of interpreting our brainwaves to predict which ads we’ll respond to, lift our moods, or queue the perfect playlist. U.S. patent filings in neurotechnology are soaring, mirroring the surge seen in gene-editing innovations.

Yet while gene-editing tools have sparked fierce public and ethical debate, neurotechnology companies are quietly amassing vast troves of brainwave data with far less scrutiny. What legal or ethical constraints are in place to govern the collection, use, or commercialization of this deeply personal data? Positioned at the intersection of data privacy, intellectual property, and scientific innovation, these questions demand …

“Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!” The Case For Resale Rights For Visual Artists In The United States, Alice Darakhchava

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

Resale rights can be understood to be a form of royalty payments that compensate visual artists for subsequent sales after the initial sale of their artwork. In contrast to the schemes available to music artists in the United States, who receive payment for subsequent use of their works through licenses for public performance, synchronization licenses, or mechanical licenses, visual artists lack the ability to profit from the resale of their creations. This discrepancy separates the United States from the approaches to resale rights in many European countries and other countries that have adopted this system. Countries that recognize resale rights …

The Mic Drop: The Urgent Call For Scotus To Settle The Discord On Right Of Publicity Preemption And The Split That Never Was, Roselyn P. Castillo

University of Miami Business Law Review

The Roberts Court and . . . 50 Cent? Surely, no one predicted this duo, but sooner rather than later, it may be reflected in casebooks across the nation. In 2020, the Second Circuit joined what has been referred to as a growing circuit split over the tension between state law right of publicity claims and federal copyright preemption. Aligning with the Eighth and Ninth Circuits, the Second Circuit held that a state law right of publicity claim was preempted. Conversely, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh Circuits have held that copyright law does not preempt state law right of publicity …

The Choice Of Law For Nazi-Looted Art Restitution: Cassirer V. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, California Assembly Bill 2867, And The Balance Between State, Federal, And Foreign Law, Alexander Stanfield

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

A Deep Fake Dilemma: The Battle Over Keeping It Real, Tyler Gollin

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Machine Learned Misogyny: Gender Bias In Ai, Niria Rodriguez-Davila

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Training Your Large Language Model How To Speak "Human": A Transformative Public Necessity Or Copyright Infringement?, Isabelle Nasser

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Renaissance Of Inequitable Conduct: Luv N' Care, Ltd. V. Laurain And The Affirmative Egregious Misconduct Exception To But-For Materiality, Katherine Reich

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.