Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Copyright Divisibility And The Anticommons, Jyh-An Lee

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trips-Plus, Public Health And Performance-Based Rewards Schemes Options And Supplements For Policy Formation In Developing And Least Developed Countries, Mohammed K. El-Said

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme People's Court Annual Report On Intellectual Property Cases (2015) (China), Xiaohan Lou, Mingyuan Song, Chao Yu

Washington International Law Journal

The Supreme People’s Court of China began publishing its Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases in 2008. The annual reports, published in April each year, summarize and review new intellectual property cases. This translation includes all 32 cases and 38 legal issues of the 2015 Annual Report. It addresses various areas of law related to intellectual property, including patent law, trademark law, copyright law, unfair competition law, antitrust law, new plant product patent law, and laws related to procedural and evidentiary issues in intellectual property cases. While China is not a common law country, these cases serve as guidelines for …

Safeguards For Defendant Rights And Interests In International Intellectual Property Enforcement Treaties, Kimberlee Weatherall

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping Tabs: When Will Ttab Decisions Have Preclusive Effect? Preclusive Effect Of T.T.A.B. Likelihood Of Confusion Decisions After B&B; V. Hargis Industries, Brendan J. Ketchum

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: Censorship In The Guise Of Authorship: Harmonizing Copyright And The First Amendment, M. Margaret Mckeown

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Recent Trends In The Use Of Surveys In Advertising Law Disputes; An Update On The Case Law, Kenneth Plevan

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Multiple Intellectual Property Damage Complications As In Apple V Samsung? Try Using Excel, W. Lesser

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

(Mis)Appropriation Art: Transformation And Attribution In The Fair Use Doctrine, John Carl Zwisler

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Since the adoption of transformation by the Supreme Court, judicial decisions have continued to expand the fair use doctrine. Relying on transformation has led judges to subjectively critique and analyze artwork in order to make a legal decision. However, while a majority of circuits apply transformation, it is not followed by all of them. Transformation should no longer be a requirement in a fair use analysis concerning appropriation art, because it first requires subjective interpretation of an artist’s work. Transformation also gives an advantage to artists appropriating the work, claiming fair use of another’s copyrighted work. Instead, the emphasis should …

Copyrights And Trademarks In Cyberspace: A Legal And Economic Analysis, Georgios I. Zekos

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Defining The Press Clause: The End Of Hot News And The Attempt To Save Traditional Media, Adam Tragone

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Color Blocking: How The Harmonization Of Color Protection May Catalyze Color Depletion In Global Markets, Arsha Hasan

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Qualitex decision in 1995 inspired trademark reformation and harmonization worldwide for the protection of color marks. While protecting color trademarks has not created issues of market entry in domestic markets, the growth in the number of transnational market participants and an increased utilization of non-traditional branding may catalyze color depletion in international trade. After exploring how current advertising expenditure requirements and distinctiveness requirements affect the registrability and protection of a color mark, this Note offers potential global reforms to help minimize hurdles for small scale transnational participants and the threat of international color depletion. Specifically, due to consumers' increasing …

Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Technological Neutrality: Recalibrating Copyright In The Information Age, Carys Craig

Articles & Book Chapters

This article aims to draw the connection between how we conceptualize legal rights over information resources and our capacity to develop technologically neutral legal norms in the information age. More specifically, it identifies and critically examines three competing approaches to the idea of technological neutrality apparent in copyright jurisprudence. Ultimately, it is argued that true technological neutrality requires not simply the seamless expansion of legal rights into new technological contexts, but the careful, contextual recalibration of rights and interests in light of shifting values and changing circumstances. As a normative principle, technological neutrality in copyright law thus demands a nuanced …

Why Royalties For Standard Essential Patents Should Not Be Set By The Courts, Stanley M. Besen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Although Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs) generally require patent holders to agree to license their technologies on Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND), or Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND), terms as a condition of including their technologies in a standard, SSOs have generally declined to accept responsibility for clarifying the meaning of these commitments. Despite this, a consensus has emerged among most commentators as to how F/RAND royalties should be determined for Standard Essential Patents. According to the consensus view, a F/RAND royalty should be the cost of obtaining a license just before the patented invention is declared essential to compliance with an …

Before Mayo & After Alice: The Changing Concept Of Abstract Ideas, Magnus Gan

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice v. CLS are landmark Supreme Court decisions which respectively introduced and then instituted a new, two-step patent-eligibility test. Step One tests the patent claims for abstractness, while Step Two tests for inventive application. This new test was so demanding that in the one-year period after Alice was decided, over 80 percent of all challenged patents had one or more claims invalidated. In fact, at the Federal Circuit over the same time period, only one recorded case of a successful Alice defense exists—DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com. This note explains DDR’s success as an inconsistency …

The Effect Of The 1886 Berne Convention On The U.S. Copyright System's Treatment Of Moral Rights And Copyright Term, And Where That Leaves Us Today, Samuel Jacobs

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The 1886 Berne Convention was the most influential copyright related treaty for over a century, and provided important minimum substantive protections for authors. Key provisions included the establishment of the principle of National Treatment, the abolishment of formalities in order to receive copyright protection, a required copyright term of life of the author plus fifty years, and most offensive to the U.S. copyright system, the mandate that signatories provide authors non-economic moral rights. Despite the international importance and widespread acceptance of the Berne Convention, the U.S. did not join the Convention for over one hundred years, making it one of …

Fee Shifting For Ptab Proceedings, Megan M. La Belle

Scholarly Articles

Fee shifting in patent litigation has been a hot topic in recent years. In Octane Fitness v. ICON and Highmark v. Allcare, the Supreme Court made it easier to shift fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285, which allows courts to award reasonable attorney’s fees to prevailing parties in patent cases. Moreover, several bills have been introduced in Congress since 2013 that would expand courts’ power beyond the parameters of § 285. Various aspects of these proposals have been heavily debated, including whether fee shifting should be mandatory or discretionary, how to recover fees from the “real party in interest,” and …

Public Enforcement Of Patent Law, Megan M. La Belle

Scholarly Articles

Law enforcement in the modern regulatory state is largely a joint enterprise. In areas such as securities, antitrust, civil rights, and environmental law, enforcement responsibilities are allocated between public and private actors. Patent law, on the other hand, is enforced almost exclusively through private lawsuits. Considering patent law's constitutionally mandated public purpose--“to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”-- this privatization of patent enforcement is troubling.

In recent years, there has been some movement away from this purely private enforcement scheme for patent law. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, for example, have involved themselves in …

Risky Ip, Andres Sawicki

Articles

No abstract provided.

Disclosing Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

While patent scholars have subjected disclosure doctrines to considerable scrutiny in the context of utility patent law, very little has been written about the role of those doctrines in design patent law. At first blush, this is not surprising: modern design patent documents usually contain short disclosures comprised primarily of drawings, accompanied by very little text. Although this might suggest limited aspirations for design patent disclosures, the story is more complex. Design patents contain only a pro forma claim; it is the disclosure that defines the scope of the protected design. Moreover, although the modern practice of relying primarily on …

Accountability In The Patent Market Part Ii: Should Public Corporations Disclose More To Shareholders?, Ian D. Mcclure

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article identifies the general devaluation and/or increased risk of invalidation of these types of patents only as an example of information that could be important to shareholders. It then describes the impact this devaluation and known patent liabilities could have on corporate value, presents the requirements for particular companies to disclose patent information to shareholders and policy reasons for strengthening these requirements, and proposes that public companies could do more—or could be required to do more—to limit their risk and increase information transparency to investors.

An Unconventional Approach To Reviewing The Judicially Unreviewable: Applying The Dormant Commerce Clause To Copyright, Donald P. Harris

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Nontechnical Disclosure, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

One of the primary goals of the patent system is the broad dissemination of technical knowledge. But, as this Article argues, there is also an underappreciated amount of nontechnical knowledge contained in a patent, information that may in certain cases be more valuable to readers than the technical disclosure contained in a patent. This Article looks at various types of nontechnical disclosure to argue that appreciating the nontechnical aspects of patent disclosure can increase our understanding of what information patents are disseminating to the general public.

Golden Road Motor Inn, V. Islam, Et. Al., 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 49 (Jul. 17, 2016), Heather Caliguire

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Nevada Supreme Court held that non-compete agreements cannot extend further than what is reasonable and necessary to protect the interests of the employer and cannot create an undue hardship on the employee. It also held that courts may not “blue line” (“blue pencil”) contracts, that is change or delete terms to make the Contract legal. The Court further held that altering player contact information, so long as the information can be restored with minimal disruption to the gaming company does not rise to the level of conversion. Finally, the Court held that a gaming company is not liable for …

The Proof Is On The Label? Protecting Kentucky Bourbon In The Global Era, James Bonar-Bridges

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

International Intellectual Property Law, Caroline Berube, Susan Brushaber, Amanda Covington, Manish Dhingra, Robin S. Fahlberg, Carolina Keller Jupitz, Jennifer Kwon, Mrityunjay Kumar, Daniel Marugg, Bruce A. Mcdonald

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Judicial Lobbying, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Judges who lobby Congress for legal reform tread into an ethical gray area: lobbying is legally permissible, but generally frowned upon. Currently, there are no legal or ethical constraints on judges speaking publicly regarding proposed legislative changes, only an ill-defined norm against the practice. Scholars have largely dismissed judicial lobbying efforts as the result of haphazard, one-off events, driven by the unique interests, expertise, or ideology of the individual judge involved. According to scholars, there is nothing that should be done — not to mention little that could be done — to restrict judges from lobbying.

Judicial lobbying occurs, in …

The Mayo Framework Is Bad For Your Health, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

This Article begins by providing a brief historical retrospective of the development of the patent eligibility doctrine, and then delves into the related questions of: (1) what are the Supreme Court’s policy objectives for the recent reinvigoration of the patent eligibility doctrine; and (2) has it achieved those objectives? The article then discusses three important out-standing questions regarding the application of the new test for patent eligibility: (1) what constitutes a natural phenomenon; (2) what constitutes an inventive step; and (3) what, if any, role does preemption play in the analysis? The article then provides four examples of recent lower …

The Uncoordinated Public Domain, Robert Spoo

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.