Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.

Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual …

Alternative Software Protection In View Of In Re Bilski, Charles Duan, Lauren Katzenellenbogen, James Skelley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's (CAFC) en banc decision, In re Bilski, redefined the standard for patenting processes including business methods and computer software. In Bilski, the Federal Circuit departed from the "useful, concrete, and tangible result" test it had established in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. SignatureFinancialGroup,Inc., which had been the standard for the past ten years. The Federal Circuit returned to a test articulated nearly 40 years ago by the Supreme Court in Gottschalk v. Benson, and clarified that State Street was "never intended to supplant the Supreme Court's test.", Under …

Memorial To Barbara Ringer, Peter Jaszi

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The story goes that in 439 BC the retired consul Cincinnatus was summoned from the plow by the Senate and people of Rome. One more time, he saw the Republic through a time of particular peril, resigning office immediately afterwards to return to his rural retirement - to be transmuted into a timeless emblem of selfless probity. Episodes of this kind are even rarer in the annals of the U.S. civil service than in the Roman history. But I had the good fortune to be a witness to one such - Barbara Ringer's return to the Library of Congress in …

Traditional Culture: A Step Forward For Protection In Indonesia, Peter A. Jaszi

Traditional Knowledge and Culture

Traditional Culture: A Step Forward for Protection in Indonesia is the culmination of research conducted as part of a group of scholars, journalists, and observers of the arts who made multiple trips to Central Java and Bali to look at the practice of certain “traditional” arts. These arts—Javanese wayang kulit, gamelan music, and batik, and Balinese dance, gamelan music, and ikat—have, like most Indonesian arts, historically operated without Intellectual Property (IP) regulation. Professor Jazsi met with artists, performers, and creators to discuss their concerns regarding the current state of their arts, and to explore possibilities for attribution and compensation for …

Clean Technology Transfer And Intellectual Property Rights, Nitya Nanda, Nidhi Srivastava

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Rights To Enhance International Clean Tech Transfers, Anastasia Lewandoski

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Statement Of Best Practices In Fair Use Of Dance-Related Materials Recommendations For Librarians, Archivists, Curators, And Other Collections Staff., Peter Jaszi

Copyright, Fair Use & Open Access

This Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use clarifies what librarians, archivists, curators, and others working with dance-related materials currently regard as a reasonable application of the Copyright Act’s fair use doctrine, where the use of copyrighted materials is essential to significant cultural missions and institutional goals.

Submission Of American Patent And Health Law Professors On Australian Senate Community Affairs Committee Inquiry Into Gene Patents, Joshua Sarnoff

Legislative Testimony & Comments

In response to the Australian Senate Community Affairs Committee’s Inquiry, the author and other American law professors submitted a brief to help the Senate Committee understand the current state of American law, and how the provision of patents on genetic technologies has and will continue to create serious problems for innovation, health care, and society at large.

The brief addresses the following subjects in regard to American law, which respond generally to the issues raised by the Committee’s inquiry. 1. The questionable need for patent rights in genetic sequences and other derivatives of naturally occurring materials, certain diagnostic discoveries, and …

2008 International Trade Decisions Of The Federal Circuit A Review Of Recent Decisions Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit: Area Summaries, Jarrod Goldfeder

American University Law Review

The United States is the world’s largest importing country, with nearly $2 trillion in imports of goods during 2007. Given the ever- increasing volume of international trade, the United States has put in place an intricate body of laws designed to regulate the flow of goods and has created federal agencies responsible for the enforcement of those laws, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), the U.S. Department of Commerce (“Commerce”), the U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC” or “Commission”), and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (“USTR”). Each agency is charged with different responsibilities over the fair and efficient …

2008 Patent Law Decisions Of The Federal Court A Review Of Recent Decisions Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit: Area Summaries, Todd Zubler, Nina Tallon, Jamie Wisz, Jamaica Szeliga

American University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court took a slight breather from patent-law issues in 2008. After issuing three patent-law decisions in 2007 (including KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc.), the Court issued just one patent-law decision in 2008—Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. Despite the Supreme Court’s slower pace, however, the Court’s influence loomed large in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2008. In a number of cases, the Federal Circuit continued to work through the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent precedents, most notably KSR and the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay Inc. …

2008 Trademark Decisions Of The Federal Circuit A Review Of Recent Decisions Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit: Area Summaries , David M. Kelly, Stephanie H. Bald

American University Law Review

In 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued eight trademark decisions and designated one of those eight decisions as precedential. These numbers are significantly lower than in recent years. The cases consist of appeals from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”), the United States Court of International Trade, and the United States Court of Federal Claims. Of the eight trademark decisions, four focused on substantive issues and four primarily involved procedural issues. The Federal Circuit generally adopted the findings of the lower tribunals, affirming all but one of the eight decisions on appeal. The …

Increased Market Power As A New Secondary Consideration In Patent Law A Review Of Recent Decisions Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit, Andrew Blair-Stanek

American University Law Review

Courts have developed several non-technical “secondary considerations” to help judges and juries in patent litigation decide whether a patent meets the crucial statutory requirement that a patent be non-obvious. This Article proposes a tenth secondary consideration to help judges and juries: increased market power. If a patent measurably increases its holders’ market power in the market into which it sells products or services, then that increase should weigh in favor of finding the patent non-obvious. Using increased market power incorporates the predictive benefits of several other secondary considerations, while often increasing the accuracy and availability of evidence. It would provide …

Brief Of American Medical Association Et Al. As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiffs’ Opposition To Defendants’ Motion To Dismiss And In Support Of Plaintiffs’ Motion For Summary Judgment, Association For Molecular Pathology V. U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, Joshua Sarnoff

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Amici seek to provide this Court with insight into the adverse effects on medical care and innovation that gene patents cause. These adverse effects could and should have been avoided, because genetic sequence and correlation patents – including all of the Myriad patents at issue – are not patentable inventions. These patents should never have been granted, and are not needed to create incentives for innovation.

The Myriad patents on breast cancer genes, mutations, and correlations between mutations and disease have a direct, severe, and adverse impact on members of the Amici medical organizations and all humanity. Myriad’s announced intention …

Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of The Petitioners, Harjo V. Pro-Football Inc., Victoria Phillips, Christine Haight Farley

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Amici are scholars at U.S. law schools whose research and teaching focus is intellectual property law, federal Indian law and constitutional law. Amici are concerned that the Court of Appeals decision below is inconsistent with the well settled law that laches does not apply to trademark cancellation claims, including those based on disparagement, because of the strong public interest in being free from the harms that disparagement causes.

These harms, which include damaging stereotyping and stigmatization, are serious and deserve protection no matter what private harm may be caused by delay to the trademark registrant. Further, precluding laches in these …

Is There Such A Thing As Postmodern Copyright?, Peter Jaszi

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Back in 1992, artist/entrepreneur Jeff Koons suffered a humiliating setback when the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit repudiated the suggestion that his reuse of objects from public culture might constitute a "fair use" defense to a copyright infringement claim. Fourteen years later, in a case that again involved a photographer's claim of copyright infringement, Koons triumphed in the same judicial forum. What had changed? This Article explores, in particular, one among a variety of alternative explanations: Koons may have caught the very leading edge of a profound wave of change in the social and cultural conceptualization …

An Economic Justification For Open Access To Essential Medicine Patents In Developing Countries, Sean Flynn, Aidan Hollis, Mike Palmedo

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper offers an economic rationale for compulsory licensing of needed medicines in developing countries. The patent system is based on a trade-off between the “deadweight losses” caused by market power and the incentive to innovate created by increased profits from monopoly pricing during the period of the patent. However, markets for essential medicines under patent in developing countries with high income inequality are characterized by highly convex demand curves, producing large deadweight losses relative to potential profits when monopoly firms exercise profit-maximizing pricing strategies. As a result, these markets are systematically ill-suited to exclusive marketing rights, a problem which …

Convergence And Incongruence: Trademark Law And Icann's Introduction Of New Generic Top-Level Domains, Christine Haight Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper demonstrates how problematic convergences between Internet technology, the demands of a burgeoning e-market and trademark laws have created myriad issues in international governance of domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that governs internet's infrastructure, recently approved a new policy that would allow it to accept applications for additional generic top-level domains (gTLDs). What ICANN contemplates is a uniform system to approve generic top level domains that is expected to have profound implications. Under this new plan anyone can apply for a new gTLD at any time and it could be literally …

Book Review: Stephen Hopgood, 'Keepers Of The Flame: Understanding Amnesty International', Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This brief review (1100 words) examines Stephen Hopgood's half journalism-half anthropological journey inside the world of Amnesty International. The book is an outstanding piece of both reportage and analysis, and the review discusses the various pressures, political and ideological and social, on AI and those that work in its International Secretariat. As the review notes, AI is more like a religious order than anything else, and that observation has ramifications for the NGO world beyond AI.

Disparity In Copyright Protection: Focus On The Finished Image Ignores The Art In The Details , Karen D. Williams

American University Law Review

Courts initial reactions play a major role in the assessment of copyright protection. A quick recognition of pictorial quality can result in an easy finding of originality. Based upon the extremely low threshold, such a quick summation is not surprising or necessarily refutable. However, the blanket assumption of a pictorial quality in photography creates a disparity in copyright protection for works of graphic design, like maps, which may not emit that immediate pictorial or aesthetic quality but may still employ creative choice. Those works that “scream” their pictorial nature get cursory review while the more subtle are being categorized as …

2007 Trademark Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Susan M. Kayser, David Jaquette

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Acquiring Innovation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

American University Law Review

In recent years, the innovation market has witnessed a new business model involving companies that are mere patent holding shells and not operating entities. They have no customers or products to offer, but they do have an aggressive tactic of using patent portfolios to threaten other operating companies with potential infringement litigation. The strategy is executed with the end goal of extracting handsome settlements. Acquisitions of patents for offensive use have become a major concern to operating companies because such acquisitions pose the threats of patent injunction, interrupting the business and crippling further innovation. While many operating companies today know …

Does The Supreme Court Still Matter?, Timothy B. Dyk

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

2007 Patent Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Dean L. Fanelli, Victor N. Balancia, Robert J. Smyth, Carl P. Bretscher, Arthur M. Antonelli, Mark J. Sullivan, Kent E. Basson

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Big Boi, Dr. Seuss, And The King: Expanding The Constitutional Protections For The Satirical Use Of Famous Trademarks , Aaron Jaroff

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Code Of Best Practices In Fair Use For Online Video, Peter A. Jaszi, Patricia Aufderheide

Copyright, Fair Use & Open Access

Until the release of these best practices, anyone uploading a video ran the risk of becoming inadvertently entangled in an industry skirmish, as media companies struggle to keep their programs from circulating on the internet. This document is a code of best practices created by a collaborative team of media scholars and lawyers, to help creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video, interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use in online video. The code identifies, among other things, six kinds of unlicensed uses of copyrighted material that may be considered fair, under certain …

Presentation: Naming The Unnamed: Intellectual Property Rights Of Women Artists From India, Ruchira Goswani, Karubakee Nandi

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property At The Intersection Of Race And Gender: Lady Sings The Blues, K.J. Greene

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Enhanced Protections For Geographical Indications Under Trips: Potential Conflicts Under The U.S. Constitutional And Statutory Regimes, David Snyder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Clinical Legal Education And The Public Interest In Intellectual Property Law, Christine Haight Farley, Peter Jaszi, Victoria Phillips, Joshua D. Sarnoff, Ann Shalleck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Clinical legal education provides a powerful methodology for students to learn about the relationships among intellectual property law theories, policies and practices; to encounter the experiences of persons who seek protection or who feel the legal regimes of intellectual property impinging on their ability to engage in educational, creative, innovative and culturally significant work; and to develop as lawyers. We describe in this article our motivations for forming an intellectual property law clinic at the American University Washington College of Law, the goals that we seek to achieve, and the tripartite pedagogical structure that we adopted - (1) a seminar …

Writer's Block, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.