Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Faulkner V. National Geographic’S Effect On Author's Rights In Electronic Transfer, Allison Hundstad

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Technological advances have triggered constant evolution in copyright law. As the Internet and computers have allowed images and written works to be available with the click of a button, Congress and the courts have been faced with the task of reshaping copyright law in order to determine the digital rights of material that already has copyright protection in its print form, with the goal of reducing the uncertainty surrounding the ownership of the right to reproduce these materials in a digital format.

Champagne, Feta, And Bourbon: The Spirited Debate About Geographical Indications, Justin Hughes

Articles

Geographical Indications (GIs) are terms for foodstuffs that are associated with certain geographical areas. The law of GIs is currently in a state of flux. Legal protection for GIs mandated in the TRIPS Agreement is implemented through appellations law in France and through certification mark systems in the United States and Canada. This Article first examines the state of GIs throughout the world. The author then turns to the continuing debate between the European Union and other industrialized economies over this unique form of intellectual property. The European Union claims that increasing GI protection would aid developing countries, but, in …

Harvest Of Knowledge: Why The Public Policy Behind Copyright Law Requires Legislation Endorsing Digital Media Collections As Privileged Revisions, Diana Katz Gerstel

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Identity Theft: Tribute Bands, Grand Rights, And Dramatico-Musical Performances, Brent Giles Davis

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Censure The Tree For Its Rotten Apple: Attributing Liability To Parents For The Copyright Infringement Of Their Minor Children, Chad Silver

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The note argues that holding parents legally responsible for copyright infringement committed by their minor children could serve as an effective deterrent against illegal music downloading. It explores the legal frameworks for parental liability, including contributory and vicarious liability, and evaluates the potential benefits and challenges of this approach in addressing the decline of the recording industry due to illegal file sharing.

A Modest Proposal To Streamline Fair Use Determinations, David Nimmer

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sense And Nonsense In Measuring Sponsorship Confusion, Jacob Jacoby

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Catch 1201: A Legislative History And Content Analysis Of The Dmca Exemption Proceedings, Bill D. Herman, Oscar H. Gandy Jr.

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) prohibits circumventing a technological protection measure (TPM) that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. In the name of mitigating the innocent casualties of this new ban, Congress constructed a triennial rulemaking, administered by the Register of Copyrights, to determine temporary exemptions. This paper considers the legislative history of this rulemaking, and it reports the results of a systematic content analysis of its 2000 and 2003 proceedings.

Inspired by the literature on political agendas, policymaking institutions, venue shifting, and theories of delegation, we conclude that the legislative motivations for § 1201 were laundered through international treaties, …

Software Copyright Law And The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Under The Microscope: Blizzard V. Bnetd As The Lens, David Brett Kinitsky

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Gibson V. Prs: The Applicability Of The Initial Interest Confusion Doctrine To Trademarked Product Shapes, Paul Anthony Marchisotto

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Open Access In Law Teaching: A New Approach To Legal Education, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The "open access" movement seeks to change our approach to the distribution of scholarship in the fields of science, medicine, the social sciences, and law. This Essay argues for the application of these principles to legal education itself. Open access would mean greater flexibility, interaction, and innovation in the creation of course materials. It would lead to new teaching methods and new forms of feedback between student and professor. Open access centers on particular legal subject areas could facilitate national and international collaboration. Ultimately, the open access law school would ameliorate the growing standardization and commodification of legal education by …

A New Tool For Analyzing Intellectual Property, Stephen M. Mcjohn

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This piece reviews Economic and Legal Dimensions, which presents a pragmatic economic theory about the proper remedies in intellectual property cases. The book shows in a number of areas how remedies play a crucial role in defining intellectual property rights, and how to improve the law. The first part of the review presents the authors' general theory. The second part tests how the theory succeeds in explaining the existing law on remedies in intellectual property. The third part analyzes how the theory could be used to bring considerable clarity to murky areas such as standing to sue, liability standards, measurement …

Bound By Law? Trapped In A Struggle She Didn't Understand, By Day A Filmmaker, By Night She Fought For Fair Use! [Tales From The Public Domain], Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

A graphic novel about fair use with respect to United States copyright law.

Synopsis:

A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the "Rocky" theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights for the song. Can this be true? "Eyes on the Prize," the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers' rights to music and footage had expired.

What's going on here? It's the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it's the inspiration for this comic book. Follow its heroine Akika as she films her …

Patent Buy-Outs For Global Disease Innovations For Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

Drug prices are uniquely susceptible to radical price reductions through generic competition. Patented pharmaceuticals may be priced at more than 30 times the marginal cost of production; the excess is the patent rent collected by the drug company while the patent and exclusive marketing periods remain. Patent rents are significant. AIDS drugs which sell for US$10,000 per person per year in the US are sold generically for less than US$200. If patented drugs could be sold at the marginal cost of production, cost effective treatments would become even more attractive, and other interventions would become affordable.

This Article proposes marginal …

Estimates Of Patent Rents From Firm Market Value, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

The value of patent rents is an important quantity for policy analysis. However, estimates in the literature based on patent renewals might be understated. Market value regressions could provide validation, but they have not had clear theoretical foundations for estimating patent rents. I develop a simple model to make upper bound estimates of patent rents using regressions on Tobin's Q. I test this on a sample of US firms and find it robust to a variety of considerations. My estimates correspond well with estimates based on patentee behavior outside the pharmaceutical industry, but renewal estimates might be understated for pharmaceuticals.

Spam Vs. Ms. Piggy: An Entertainment Law Cautionary Tale, Candi Henry

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In terms of blockbusters, 1996 was a good year for film. Action-packed movies like Twister, Independence Day, and Mission Impossible competed for ticket sales with popular comedies Jerry Maguire, The First Wives Club, and The Birdcage. The critical favorite, The English Patient, also made a strong showing. Together, those films grossed almost $1.2 billion in domestic ticket sales alone, yet it was the modestly-performing family flick, Muppet Treasure Island that arguably made the biggest impact in entertainment law that year. That impact was not, however, the result of a landmark ruling. Rather, Hormel Foods Corporation v. Jim Henson Productions serves …

Not All Copyright Infringers Are Created Equal: Why Federal Income Tax Is A Proper Deductible Expense For Non-Willful Copyright Infringers, Christine Ballard

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Case law is sparse on the issue of tax deductibility for non-willful infringers and, as such, cases representing copyright, patent, and trademark infringement have been used interchangeably in an attempt to develop a rule. It is necessary to point out, however, that there are different standards for obtaining and protecting these three different types of intellectual property. As such, this Note will first analyze the remedies available for copyrights, patents, and trademarks to determine whether different standards should apply regarding the deductibility of taxes from gross infringing revenue when determining actual damage awards. Next, this Note analyzes arguments that have …

Frozen In Time? New Technologies, Fixation, And The Derivative Work Right, Patrick W. Ogilvy

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note will explore the adequacy of the scope of the derivative work right as it applies to new technologies and discuss how that right should be expanded to compensate for technological developments not foreseen when the current Copyright Act was enacted in 1976. The note will also provide a recommendation that could resolve all of the issues raised throughout. Part I provides a more detailed background of the jump-and-skip technology being used as an example to represent all referencing works. Part II first discusses and analyzes the present state of the derivative work right. It then addresses the purposes …

January 1, 2003: The Birth Of The Unpublished Public Domain And Its International Implications, Elizabeth Townsend-Gard

Faculty Articles

On January 1, 2003, a small, quiet historic transformation took place throughout the United States: unpublished works in mass came into the public domain for the first time. Section 302 of the 1976 Copyright Act created a unified system of duration, whereby unpublished and published works carry a term of life of the author plus seventy years. In order to aid with a transition from a state common law perpetual system to a "limited Times" federal statutory system, the 1976 Copyright Act built two mechanisms for change in the form of Section 303(a). First, Section 303(a) guarantees that no work …

Intellectual Property And The Development Divide, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

This article attempts to map the challenges raised by recent encounters between intellectual property and development. It proposes a normative principle of global intellectual property - one that is responsive to development paradigms that have moved far beyond simple utilitarian measures of social welfare. Recent insights from the field of development economics suggest strongly that intellectual property should include a substantive equality principle, measuring its welfare-generating outcomes not only by economic growth but also by distributional effects. A new principle of substantive equality is a necessary corollary to the formal equality principles of national treatment and minimum standards that are …

How To Give An Old Song A New License: A Recently Adopted Alternative To Rodgers And Hammerstein Organization V. Umg Recordings, Jacqueline M. Allshouse-Hutchens

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Merck V. Integra And Its Aftermath: A Safe Harbor For The Commercial Use Of Biotechnology Research Tools?, Brendan M. O'Malley

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction To David Nimmer's Modest Proposal, Justin Hughes

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"We-Intention" And The Limits Of Copyright, Lior Zemer

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Off With Their Printheads! An End To The Per Se Presumption Of Illegality For Patent Ties In Illinois Tool Works V. Independent Ink, Aliza Reicher

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Pop-Up Ads And Trademark Infringement: Whenu.Com Litigation, Janet Rubin

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Progress On The Wipo Broadcasting And Webcasting Treaty, Matthew D. Asbell

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Global Copyright, Local Speech, Michael D. Birnhack

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Duty To Protect The Rights Of Performers? Constitutional Foundations Of An Intellectual Property Right, Michael Gruenberger

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Is Fame Alone Sufficient To Create Priority Rights: An International Perspective On The Viability Of The Famous/Well-Known Marks Doctrine, Alexis Weissberger

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.