Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Understanding Illicit Insemination And Fertility Fraud From Patient Experience To Legal Reform, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Recently, several cases have been filed in North America and Europe alleging that fertility physicians inseminated former patients with their own sperm only to have this conduct come to light decades later when their unsuspecting adult children use direct-to-consumer genetic tests and learn that they are not biologically related to their fathers and often that they have multiple half-siblings. For instance, Donald Cline of Indianapolis, Indiana, has over sixty doctor-conceived children, with more continuing to come forward. Although these cases induce disgust, it has thus far proven difficult to hold these physicians legally accountable because their conduct falls within gaps …

The New Cybersquatters: The Evolution Of Trademark Enforcement In The Domain Name Space, Michael Karanicolas

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The domain name space has become a particularly contentious area of trademark enforcement as a result of the growth of online commerce, an intense competition for popular domain names, and new conceptual challenges stemming from the borderless and textual nature of the medium. In response, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”), a global non-profit which oversees the domain-name space, has implemented a highly sophisticated set of rights-protection mechanisms. This Article examines the scope of trademark protections applied under ICANN’s rights protection mechanisms to demonstrate that they have evolved far beyond their traditional consumer protection function; indeed, they …

Cracking The Code: Computer Code As Pure Speech And Its First Amendment Implications On The 3d Printed Firearms Controversy, Brian E. Heckmann

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Professor Jorge L. Contreras In Support Of Appellee And Affirmance In Ftc V. Qualcomm, Jorge L. Contreras

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Qualcomm participated in the development of 3G and 4G wireless telecommunication standards under the auspices of two SDOs, the Telecommunications Industry Association (“TIA”) and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (“ATIS”). Each of these SDOs had adopted intellectual property rights policies (IPR Policies) that required their participants to grant licenses of SEPs to implementers of their standards on FRAND terms. Yet, over the course of several years, Qualcomm refused to license its SEPs to numerous actual and potential modem chip rivals including MediaTek, Project Dragonfly (a joint venture of NTT DoCoMo, Samsung and several Japanese manufacturers), Samsung, VIA Telecom, Intel, …

Constitutions And Blockchains:Competitive Governance Of Fundamental Rule Sets, Eric Alston

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

In the context of private ordering—where rule sets are relatively fluid, centrally controlled, and exist in the shadow of law and regulation—developing generalizable insights about comparatively superior governance mechanisms is difficult. I shed light on this question by characterizing cryptocurrency blockchains as a type of constitutional rule set that both defines and legitimizes the activities supported by the underlying distributed ledger technology. More specifically, I argue that cryptocurrency blockchains have led to new forms of competition in private governance, which include exit costs and citizenship rules as important competitive margins. My analysis not only identifies the choices in constitutional governance …

A Question Of Trust: Facebook Libra As Money In The Economic And Legal Sense, Muharem Kianieff

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This article examines the use of Facebook’s Libra (now renamed “Diem”) as a substitute for fiat money. It considers Libra’s prospects for success in light of the fact that it purports to substitute trust in a technology for the traditional legal supports that bolster public trust in traditional fiat currencies. The legal doctrines that support fiat currencies do so for the purposes of recognizing the economic functions that money performs and are also meant to support public policies that promote monetary stability, protect consumers and help to enforce anti money laundering statutes. It is argued that Libra will result in …

Forum Delegation: The Birth And Transposition Of A New Approach To Public Forum Doctrine, Brett Johnson, Shane C. Epping

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper introduces and explores the concept of forum delegation: the power of government officials to suggest which forums to allow speakers to use. The concept is born out of a recent legal battle between the University of Minnesota and conservative speaker Ben Shapiro, in which the UMN required Shapiro to speak in a venue away from the heart of campus due to concerns over the school’s ability to provide adequate security for the event. The paper first analyzes the UMN case to assess the constitutionality of forum delegation in the context of regulating speech and public universities. Next, it …

Corruption And College Sports: A Love Story, Andrea Cristiani Closa

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

College sports are a staple of American tradition, bringing in hundreds of millions of viewers each year. Fans from all over the country root for their team’s success and hope they will be the ones to take home the national championship each year. Increasingly, however, college sports have been in the public eye for a very different reason: corruption. The National Collegiate Athletics Association’s (“NCAA”) Amateurism Rule, which prohibits student-athletes from receiving compensation, has contributed to this ongoing corruption. The NCAA insists upon its student-athletes remaining amateurs, even though its own rule is damaging the integrity of college sports. Players, …

Accept Me, Accept Me Not: What Do Journal Acceptance Rates Really Mean?, Rachel Herbert

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Journal acceptance rates should not be used as evaluative metrics for journals: we find no evidence that acceptance rates are a reliable signal of quality or impact. Journal acceptance rates are useful for submitting authors and ICSR recommends that they be made publicly available where possible. Gold open access journals do tend to have lower acceptance rates than other open access types, but these also tend to be younger journals: as these journals age, will those acceptance rates increase, or will the open access model influence the acceptance rate? ...

We identified the fact that low acceptance rates are demonstrated …

Who’S Writing Open Access (Oa) Articles? Characteristics Of Oa Authors At Ph.D.-Granting Institutions In The United States, Anthony J. Olejniczak, Molly J. Wilson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The open access (OA) publication movement aims to present research literature to the public at no cost and with no restrictions. While the democratization of access to scholarly literature is a primary focus of the movement, it remains unclear whether OA has uniformly democratized the corpus of freely available research, or whether authors who choose to publish in OA venues represent a particular subset of scholars—those with access to resources enabling them to afford article processing charges (APCs). We investigated the number of OA articles with article processing charges (APC OA) authored by 182,320 scholars with known demographic and institutional …

Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow: An Exploration Of Cell-Based Meats And How The Fda And Usda May Protect Intellectual Property Rights, Sean A. Grafton

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Lab-grown meats are ready to be sold in United States markets. However, the meat product needs approval from regulators such as the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) and the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”). The regulation approval process takes a significant amount of time. This approval period will cut into the lab-grown meat producers’ patent time, rendering a period of the patent ineffective.

This Comment analyzes the effect of, and possible changes to, our current laws on the emerging lab-grown meat market. To look at this problem, this Comment compares FDA and USDA regulations, analyzes the Hatch-Waxman Act, and …

Pre-Game Strategy For Long-Term Win: Using Trademark Registration And Right Of Publicity To Protect Esports Gamers, John Bat

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The soaring popularity of esports across the globe has turned ultra-talented gamers into a blend of athlete and entertainer. The youthful esports ecosystem is exploding in growth, and the world is taking notice. But are the gamers who are eyeing professional play taking basic legal steps to develop and shield their brands, as well as bolster their collective negotiating leverage with teams, leagues, and miscellaneous entities? This note explores what features of an up-and-coming esports gamer might be worth protecting through a trademark and/or personality-rights schema, which in turn, could assist competitive gamers who are interested in developing their careers …

Should The Ncaa Have To Pay? Long-Term Injuries In College Athletics, Improper Assumptions Of Risk, And Coverage Of Medical Expenses After College, Alexandrea Jacinto

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Student-athletes spend years training, perfecting their sport, and working hard in school in order to make it to the big leagues: Division I College Athletics. However, when student-athletes finally get there, they are met with empty promises, and often leave with injuries that no one took the time to warn them about. That is because, despite being told that they must sign an agreement with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) which binds them to the organization’s rules, athletes learn quickly that the other side of that agreement is rarely, if ever, upheld when they need it. Courts fail to …

Response To Oliar And Stern: On Duration, The Idea/Expression Dichotomy, And Time, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Courts often use possession to determine who should own unclaimed resources. Yet, as Oliar and Stern demonstrate, the concept of possession is little more than a metaphor, capable of being applied to a broad range of phenomena. The authors helpfully deploy “time” as a metric to sort through the rules determining what should count as possession, and they survey the likely costs and benefits attached to choosing earlier versus later events as triggers for acquiring title.

With those tools in hand, Oliar and Stern employ “time” and the analogy of physical possession to address problems in copyright, patent, and trademark …

Increasing Diversity Among Women Entrepreneurs In High Growth High Tech Using Hbcu Female Academic Entrepreneurs, Clovia Hamilton

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

There is a concentrated number of potential women entrepreneurs of diverse races among faculty in the United States' Historically Black Colleges and Universities (known as HBCUs and are called 'Black Colleges' herein). This study describes the potential for developing university technology transfer in these Black Colleges as a strategy for increasing diversity among women entrepreneurs in high growth, high tech fields using female academic entrepreneurs. Currently, Black Colleges lag behind their peer non-Black Colleges in . technology transfer because historically they have been under, served and were originally established largely as teaching and blue-collar trade schools. Although Black female STEM …

Movements, Moments, And The Eroding Antitrust Consensus, Michael Wolfe

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Timothy Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (Columbia Global Reports, 2018). $14.99.

Timothy Wu’s book, The Curse of Bigness, offers a brief history on and critical perspective of antitrust law’s development over the last century, calling for a return to a Brandeisian approach to the law. In this review-essay, I use Wu’s text as a starting point to explore antitrust law’s current political moment. Tracing the dynamics at play in this debate and Wu’s role in it, I note areas underexplored in Wu’s text regarding the interplay of antitrust law with other forms of …

In Re: Patentability Of The Peltzer Inventions, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The motion picture Gremlins (1984) stars Hoyt Wayne Axton (1938-1999) as Randall Peltzer, a prolific inventor with persistent cash-flow problems. Among other things, the motion picture discloses many of Peltzer's inventions, including the "Bathroom Buddy," the "Peltzer Smokeless Ashtray," and the "Peltzer Pet." This essay takes the form of an opinion letter evaluating the patentability ofPeltzer's inventions.

Defend Trade Secrets Act And The Seizure Provision: Useful Or Superfluous?, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 218 (2020), Sachin Bhatmuley

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Over three years have passed since the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) was passed by Congress. One of the remarkable and ground-breaking provisions of the act was the ex parte seizure provision. With its inherent expediency and the element of surprise, the ex parte seizure provision found instant appeal among the trade secret owner community. But the opponents saw a provision ripe for abuse and anti-competitive behaviour. In the three years since its enactment, the ex parte seizure provision has been used sparingly. Plaintiffs have found other provisions equally effective or at least “good enough.” Even when plaintiffs sought ex …

The Yeezy Boost 350 Copyright Registrations: Did Kanye West Turn Justice Breyer's Fear Into A Reality?, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 244 (2020), Dorien Clark

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

In the world of fashion, few have been able to gain copyright protection for their most ambitious and intricate designs. The useful article prohibition has long haunted designers and has left them with less desirable forms of protection, such as design patent or trade dress protections. Sympathetic to the artistic nature of many useful article designs, courts crafted varying standards to allow copyright protection for artistic aspects separable from the useful article. The Supreme Court articulated a new separability standard in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, which introduced a new chapter of copyright protection for useful articles. Although the standard …

Ncaa Down For The Count? New State Legislation Threatens Collegiate Sports As We Know It, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 346 (2020), Joe Nelson

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Since the 1950s, the NCAA’s amateurism shield has served as a stalwart protector in combatting litigation from athletes and coaches within its purview. They have faced many lawsuits since that time, with the overwhelming majority failing. As this comment shows, complaints have been of a wide variety such as antitrust, employment, and state action litigation. The amateurism principle was their defense in each of those situations. But now, many states have recently begun passing legislation that would allow student athletes to obtain compensation, in more ways than one. These statutes are a shot through the heart of the amateurism principle, …

Music Sampling And The De Minimis Defense: A Copyright Law Standard, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 310 (2020), Adam Baldwin

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Patents 254 Miles Up: Jurisdictional Issues Onboard The International Space Station, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 365 (2020), Bill Warners

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Over the past few decades, the emergence of private companies pursuing space exploration proves that venturing into the final frontier is no longer exclusive to government-run operations. From satellites to rocket boosters, billions of dollars worth of private property flies into space every year. However, the expansion of these private companies creates unique jurisdictional challenges for patenting private inventions and processes in outer space. This comment examines what jurisdictional claims and remedies arise when a private third-party commits patent infringement in an outer space jurisdiction that did not issue the patent.

What’S In A Name? Curver Luxembourg And Its Implications For Design Patents, 20 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 54 (2020), Zachary Shufro

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Nonobviousness Standard For Promoting Ongoing Drug Discovery: A Lesson From Sanofi-Aventis U.S., Llc V. Dr. Reddy’S Laboratories, Inc, 20 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2020), Ping-Hsun Chen

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Living Heritage, Stolen Meaning: Protecting Intangible Native American Cultural Resources Through The Right Of Publicity, 20 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 31 (2020), Shannon Price

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Friend Or Foe: Amazon And The Role It Plays In The Fight Against Copyright Infringement Of Books, 20 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 87 (2020), Emily Ruzevich

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Danning Zhu, How To Improve China’S Approach To Parallel Imports Of Goods Bearing Trademarks, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 125 (2020), Danning Zhu

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Parallel import, also known as grey market goods, refers to the act of importing goods to a country and selling in the country without the permission of the domestic owner of IP vested in the imported goods. The importer can obtain profits through the price differences between parallel imported products and domestic products of the same variety. China and the United States have huge differences in parallel import policies, even though both countries have participated in major international IP treaties. The United States requires that parallel imported goods bearing a genuine trademark or trade name registered in the United States …

Harry Potter & The "Chinese" Philosopher’S Stone: Deconstructing Copyright Piracy Through Shanzhai, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 101 (2020), Mark Edward Blankenship Jr.

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

The United States still faces a disconnect with China regarding intellectual property piracy. Particularly, with regards to shanzhai copyrightable works of art, the U.S. labels these fake works as knock-offs, rip-offs, and counterfeits. However, China views shanzhai as a unique form of copying that embraces the “Chinese spirit,” due to its constant modification and hybridization, superior quality, transformativeness, and democratic energies. By understanding the peculiarities of shanzhai, both physical and abstract, as well as China’s copyright law and tradition, this paper proposes ways on how China can improve their copyright laws to improve how shanzhai is perceived and to curb …

Is The Emperor Still Far Away? Centralization, Professionalization, And Uniformity In China's Intellectual Property Reforms, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 145 (2020), William Weightman

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

As China’s rapid economic growth continues to slow, the Chinese Communist Party now seeks to promote innovation as the engine of future development. With this new economic agenda, reforms to China’s intellectual property rights (IPR) regime have emerged as a key policy domain as China attempts to build market-supporting institutions and improve law enforcement capabilities. By reviewing the legal frameworks supporting specific judicial reforms and through non-randomized, semistructured field interviews with lawyers, IP officials, and industry representatives, this article analyzes how China’s evolving legal institutions are increasing central control in the IP adjudication process, building judicial professionalism, and ensuring uniformity …

So Are Games Coffee Mugs Or What? Games And The Right Of Publicity Revisited, 19 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 178 (2020), William K. Ford

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court held that video games are equivalent to other forms of media for First Amendment purposes. This decision should have put video games in the same category as other forms of non-commercial, expressive speech for purposes of the right of publicity. This article reviews the post-Brown decisions to determine the current place of video games within the caselaw. The result of that review is that games are still in a transitional stage, no longer merchandise as a matter of doctrine, but not yet receiving the same treatment …