Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Your Face As Property: Ip Strategies Beyond Right Of Publicity, Nick Cipriani

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

During the Second Industrial Revolution, the source of goods became more important than ever as railroads expediated travel and access to goods across the United States. Today, the United States is in the midst of its third industrial revolution, a digital revolution fueled by silicon and microchips. This digital revolution is unlike the previous two industrial revolutions because biometrics have become commodities. The technologies and goods coming out of the digital revolution are multifaceted. First, they provide a physical good through appliances that allow for communication and shopping, among other things, across geographic borders. Second, they function as a service …

Orrick On Startup Law At The Intersection Of Business + Technology, Cardozo Intellectual Property Law Society (Ipls), Cardozo Fame Center, Orrick, Heyman Center On Corporate Governance

2025–2026 Flyers

Join us for a fireside chat with Samir Bakhru and Josh Beser from Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe to learn how top tech-focused law firms advise startups, founders and high-growth companies and how intellectual property strategy fits into corporate practice.

Orrick On Startup Law At The Intersection Of Business And Technology, Cardozo Fame Center, Cardozo Intellectual Property Law Society (Ipls), Samir Bakhru, Josh Beser

2026 Event Invitations

Join us for a fireside chat with Samir Bakhru and Josh Beser from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, to learn how top tech-focused law firms advise startups, founders, and high-growth companies, and how intellectual property strategy fits into corporate practice. Presented by the FAME Center and IPLS. Dinner will be provided.

Stitching Up Industry Issues: Arbitration Can Offer Customized Solutions To Fashion Intellectual Property Disputes, Catherine Meng

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This comment proposes alternative dispute resolution (ADR), specifically arbitration, as a more effective mechanism for resolving fashion copyright disputes. The fashion industry has historically received limited protection for designs—primarily trademark and patent law—resulting in widespread copying and difficulty enforcing claims. In the 2017 case Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc., the Supreme Court added copyright to the patchwork of protections. However, that protection is available only for aesthetic elements, not functional ones. The difficulty in distinguishing these components, along with the challenges of enforcing claims across borders and between parties with unequal bargaining power, as in Hian v. Louis …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

The Fashion Law Names Cardozo A Top Law School For Fashion Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The Fashion Law recognized Cardozo School of Law as one of its Top Law Schools for Fashion Law, highlighting the school's interdisciplinary curriculum, the FAME Center, and its student-run Fashion Law Society. The announcement also notes the upcoming celebration honoring Barbara Kolsun and the FAME Center's anniversary.

Design Patents: Protecting Creativity In The Marketplace, Intellectual Property Law Society, Cardozo Fame Center, Fashion Law Society

2025–2026 Flyers

Join IPLS, FLS, and FAME to learn how design patents safeguard innovative visual creations in fashion and technology and how attorneys use it to protect brand identity and creative expression.

Wednesday, February11th at 12:40pm, Room 423 Sign up using the QR code to reserve your spot!

Cardozo Law Student Anika Kazi Recognized During Grammy Week For Scholarship On Songwriters' Rights, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Cardozo Law student Anika Kazi was recognized as a finalist and runner-up during Grammy Week at the Entertainment Law Initiative (ELI) Luncheon for her paper, The Missing Guild: Why Songwriters Need Collective Bargaining Rights in the Streaming Era. Her scholarship examines collective bargaining rights for songwriters and proposes reforms to improve compensation in the modern streaming economy.

Fight For Your Right: An Analysis Of A Musician’S Ability To Terminate A Copyright Assignment Of A Music Recording, Ian Waldron

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

In 2019, musicians joined together to launch two separate lawsuits against Sony Music Entertainment (“Sony”) and Universal Music Group (“UMG”) after the record labels ignored the musicians’ copyright termination notices. Copyright termination is a powerful tool that allows the original owner of a work, under some circumstances, to regain possession years after they have assigned it to another party. To defend their actions, UMG and Sony countered that since the recordings were created under a record deal, they were works for hire and the musicians acted as employees. Therefore, under the record label’s theory, the musicians would have no ownership …

The Free Content Illusion, Jonathan M. Barnett

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

Conventional scholarly wisdom tends to discount the importance of copyright as a tool for delivering remuneration to the artists that sustain the digital creative ecosystem or as an enabling mechanism that facilitates the licensing, distribution, and financing transactions that constitute the economic infrastructure of the media and entertainment industries. This position runs counter to the evolution of digital content markets, which have experienced renewed investment and growth concurrently with the development of technological tools that have enabled content owners to correct for the “copyright deficit,” regulate access, and extract payment from platforms and users. This result conforms to standard economic …

Publicity Rights After Warhol, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Andy Warhol has been proclaimed the most important artist of the twentieth century, but his influence extends farther than the art world. Given his renown, judges have cited his work, including his reworkings of celebrity photographs, as quintessentially protected expression. But this may be changing with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, which curtails the ability of creators to claim “transformative” fair use when they borrow aspects of a copyrighted work for commercial purposes. Moving beyond the decision’s copyright implications, this Article explores its potential ripple effect on publicity rights law. Although publicity rights …

Volume 14 Masthead

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fiscal Sponsorship In Truly Independent Film: Entity And Model Choice And Legal Risks, Samuel Johnson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article examines fiscal sponsorship as a legal and financing structure for “truly independent” films—low-budget, non-commercial projects created by filmmakers without access to studio financing, tax incentives, or traditional investors. Neither standalone nonprofit incorporation nor purely for-profit entity structures adequately address the unique needs of such projects. After surveying the development of fiscal sponsorship as a means of funding projects that meet an exempt purpose, relevant IRS guidance, and current prevailing practices and organizational structures in independent film, the article contends that a Model C (“regranting”) fiscal sponsorship paired with a single-member limited liability company (SMLLC) offers the optimal balance …

Fluid Agency In Ai Systems: A Case For Functional Equivalence In Copyright, Patent, And Tort, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems lack human-like consciousness or culpability, yet they exhibit fluid agency: behavior that is (i) stochastic (probabilistic and path-dependent), (ii) dynamic (co-evolving with user interaction), and (iii) adaptive (able to reorient across contexts). Fluid agency generates valuable outputs but collapses attribution, irreducibly entangling human and machine inputs. This fundamental unmappability fractures doctrines that assume traceable provenance—authorship, inventorship, and liability—yielding ownership gaps and moral “crumple zones.”

This Article argues that only functional equivalence stabilizes doctrine. Where provenance is indeterminate, legal frameworks must treat human and AI contributions as equivalent for allocating rights and responsibility—not as a claim …

Death Of Substantiality: Why The Legal System Should Rethink The Application And Weight Of This Fair-Use Factor In The Context Of Social Media, Lindsey Vickers

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The fair use test for exemption for liability from copyright infringement was codified in the 1970s and has not been updated since—despite major technological changes in the interim. While three of the test’s four prongs are still useful when applied to short-form media that now dominates worldwide media consumption, the factor that considers the substantiality of the portion used relative to the total work is obsolete. The current dysfunctionality of this prong in social media settings is not the only reason it should be reassessed by courts and Congress. The prong and its analysis are a bit of a Frankenstein. …

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Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Copyright Disincentives, Thomas D. Haley

UF Law Faculty Publications

Over the last decade, a spate of high-profile copyright infringement lawsuits rattled the music industry. Controversy followed in the wake of multi-million-dollar damages awards, with criticism emanating from courts, scholars, and musicians alike. The basic logic of the critique is sound: the specter of such massive liability for small and inadvertent similarities disincentivizes the creation of new music. But the disincentive effect remains curiously under-theorized. This Article develops the literature’s first nuanced account of this disincentive theory, drawing on analysis of hundreds of copyright dockets as well as interviews with musicians to show that the feared disincentive has not come …