Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

The Use Of Mediation To Resolve Conflicts Arising From Cultural Appropriation By Western Fashion Brands, Faith Adongo

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The Cambridge Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as "the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture." It is sometimes referred to as cultural misappropriation, and also defined as taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from a culture other than one's own, without permission. Supporters of cultural appropriation see it as the only realistic way of developing, spreading and integrating cultures, while critics see it as a means through which dominant cultures "borrow" from the cultures of minority groups.

“Ooh It Makes Me Wonder”: Do The Courts Finally Understand The Problems With Copyright Infringement And Pop Music?, Kate Camarata

Seattle University Law Review

The interaction between music and law is unique to copyright litigation. Music is “commonly regarded as a rule-free zone,” whereas the law is structured and, in essence, the “origin for rules.” This Note explores the inherent weaknesses with the substantial similarity test for copyright infringement as it relates to popular music through the lens of the recent Ninth Circuit case, Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin.

Part I of this Note reviews the history and purpose of copyright protection as well as explains the current tests utilized by courts in copyright infringement cases. Additionally, it will also show the difficulties of …

Barring Immoral Speech In Patent And Copyright, Ned Snow

SMU Law Review

In the past three years, the Supreme Court has twice ruled that Congress’s moral bars to trademark protection violate the First Amendment. Those rulings raise a simple question in other areas of intellectual property. Does the First Amendment preclude Congress from denying patent or copyright protection based on a moral reason? Congress, for instance, might deny patent protection for inventions directed toward the consumption of marijuana. Inventors would accordingly choose not to disclose knowledge about those inventions to the public, and the denial would chill their speech. Similarly, Congress would chill speech if it denied copyright protection for moral reasons. …

Hacking Antitrust: Competition Policy And The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Charles Duan

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal computer trespass statute that prohibits accessing a computer "without authorization or exceeding authorized access," has often been criticized for clashing with online norms, over-criminalizing common behavior, and infringing freedom-of-expression interests. These controversies over the CFAA have raised difficult questions about how the statute is to be interpreted, with courts of appeals split on the proper construction and the Supreme Courtset to consider the law in its current October Term 2020.

This article considers the CFAA in a new light, namely its effects on competition. Rather than merely preventing injurious trespass upon computers, …

"Because It Is Wrong": An Essay On The Immorality And Illegality Of The Online Service Contracts Of Google And Facebook, Preston M. Torbert

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This essay argues that the behavioral-advertising business model under which an internet platform, such as Google or Facebook, provides free services in exchange for the user’s personal data is immoral and illegal. It is immoral because it relies on addiction, surveillance, and manipulation of the user to deplete the user’s autonomy. The contract between the company and the user is immoral. It can also be plausibly argued that the contract is illegal under California law because it is contrary to good morals, is unconscionable, and is against public policy. As society becomes more aware of these moral and legal defects, …

The Evolving Linking Law In South Korea: Chuing It Over, Mikyung Kim, Christopher B. Shook

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

South Korean hyperlink copyright law is vague and inconsistent. Given that South Korea has the fastest internet speeds in the world, and that it has the highest internet usage penetration in Asia, sophisticated development of its hyperlink copyright law must occur—with specific attention to criminal aiding and abetting and civil tortfeasor laws. This article seeks to remedy a patchwork quilt of legal precedents as well as Korean statutory norms, and provides a comparative analysis of U.S. and EU law.

Faster Fashion: The Piracy Paradox And Its Perils, Kal Raustiala, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article introduces the "piracy paradox," arguing that the fashion industry's ability to thrive despite widespread copying is due to the freedom to copy, which accelerates the fashion cycle and drives creativity. It challenges the conventional view that intellectual property rights are essential for innovation. The authors also address critiques of fast fashion's environmental, labor, and social impacts, suggesting these issues are not unique to fashion and should be resolved through broader policies rather than intellectual property law.

The Piracy Paradox And Indigenous Fashion, Aman K. Gebru

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The conventional justification of intellectual property laws is that recognizing exclusive rights is indispensable for encouraging creativity. The Piracy Paradox challenged this assumption by providing strong evidence of the fashion industry's robust creativity in the face of widespread copying of designs, thereby suggesting that some types of creativity may not need exclusive rights. This Article examines the applicability of the piracy paradox in the context of non-Western cultures. It categorizes indigenous fashion as those open to commercialization and those closed to it. With some important caveats, this Article suggests the piracy paradox may apply to indigenous fashion that is open …

Fashion Forward: Fashion Innovation In The Era Of Disruption, Francesca M. Witzburg

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The fashion industry, a significant global economic and cultural force, faces disruption from fast fashion and digital acceleration, challenging traditional legal protections. While the U.S. offers limited intellectual property (IP) safeguards for fashion designs compared to the European Union, the industry's rapid evolution suggests that innovation through new business models, rather than stricter IP laws, may be the key to future success.

Opening Remarks, Anna Antonova, Michael Burstein

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Lanham Act, reflecting on its enduring influence on trademark law while addressing its evolution in response to new legal and technological challenges. It highlights the symposium's exploration of the Act's history, its adaptation to modern issues such as internet-related disputes and First Amendment concerns, and its continued relevance in shaping intellectual property law. The piece also underscores the role of the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal as a leading platform for scholarly discourse in intellectual property and related fields.

Fulfilling The Right To Follow: Using Blockchain To Enforce The Artist's Resale Right, Zhao Zhao

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Visual artists in countries that do not recognize the artist's resale right are at an economic disadvantage, while some countries that recognize the right experience practical difficulties in identifying and tracking resales that are subject to royalty payments for artists. As blockchain technology becomes increasingly applied to the creative industries, the full extent of its potential in enforcing droit de suite by improving the traceability of physical artwork has yet to be realized. Blockchain can be an effective mechanism for enforcing the artist's resale right as an alternative to collective management organizations. Through an analysis of the ability of blockchain …

We're All Pirates Now: Making Do In A Precarious Ip Ecosystem, Jessica Silbey

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Fifteen years after The Piracy Paradox explained how most anticopying protection is unnecessary for a thriving fashion industry, we face another piracy paradox: with broader and stronger IP laws and a digital economy in which IP enforcement is more draconian than ever, what explains the ubiquity of everyday copying, sharing, re-making, and re-mixing practices that are the lifeblood of the Internet's expressive and innovative ecosystems? Drawing on empirical data from a decade of research, this short essay provides two examples ofthis "new piracy paradox ": a legal regime that ostensibly punishes piracy in a culture in which it is unavoidable. …

Panel 1: The Scope And Strength Of Trademark Law, Megan K. Bannigan, Leah Chan Grinvald, Theodore H. Davis Jr., Mark P. Mckenna, Felix Wu

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article examines the evolution and effectiveness of the Lanham Act, focusing on its impact on trademark law. It discusses how the Act's original goals, such as providing notice of trademark rights and ensuring uniformity in a national commerce context, have been partially met due to the lack of mandatory registration and judicial interpretations that have expanded trademark protections beyond initial intentions. The panelists highlight the tension between the procedural nature of the Act and the substantive changes introduced by courts, leading to both underenforcement and overenforcement issues.

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana S. Rutschman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socioeconomic conditions that affect health risks and health outcomes across the world. The World Health Organization defines these determinants as “forces and systems” consisting of “factors combin[ing] together to affect the health of individuals and communities.” Frameworks relying on determinants of health have been widely adopted by countries in the global South and North alike, as well as international institutional players, several of which are direct or indirect players in transnational intellectual property (IP) policymaking. Issues raised by the implementation of IP policies, however, are …

"If You Can Afford Me": Reconceptualizing Expert Testimony Offered To Calculate Music Copyright Damages, Amanda Inglesh

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note argues that expert testimony in music copyright infringement cases often leads to unreliable damages calculations and undue prejudice, undermining the fairness and balance intended by copyright law. It advocates for stricter evidentiary standards and the use of neutral, court-appointed experts to address these issues and ensure that damages awards align with the purpose of copyright law, which is to compensate creators without stifling artistic creativity.

Extraterritorial Damages In Patent Law, Thomas F. Cotter

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

In 2018, the Supreme Court in WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp. held that the owner of a U.S. patent could recover its lost profit on sales it would have made outside the United States, but for the defendant's violation of 35 U.S.C. § 271()(2) a rarely used provision of the Patent Act that prohibits, subject to certain conditions, the export of patented components for combination abroad. The Court left open the question of whether owners also can recover extraterritorial damages resulting from the (much more common) setting in which the defendant is accused of an initial act of making, …

The Ordinary Authors Of The Bureau Of New Plays: Copyright And Reallocating Authority In The American Theatre (1936-1949), Brent Salter

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

This Article examines the brief history of the Bureau of New Plays, a nonprofit enterprise funded in 1936 by seven major Hollywood film studios and administered by the Theatre Guild's Theresa Helburn, to identify and develop talented young American playwrights. A study of the Bureau of New Plays provides a window into the authority that playwrights, and particularly younger writers, exercised over the work they created. In one respect, the establishment of the Bureau of New Plays complemented American copyright's general trajectory toward the expansion of the rights of the individual author, and in the context of the theatre the …

An Estate Plan For Kanye West, Thomas E. Simmons

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

One inventory item in megastar Kanye West's vast portfolio of assets merits a unique sort of care and safeguarding his right ofpublicity. The right ofpublicity is a property interest which represents the commercial value of a celebrity's name, image, and likeness. In some states, including California, the right survives the celebrity's death and is freely alienable and devisable. A protective arrangement, such as a trust, is often pursued to impose postmortem use and transferability restrictions on property that has particular importance to the testator. This Article proposes a noncharitable purpose trust as a means by which Kanye West's right of …

Post-Etherdelta: Clarifying Liabilities For Cryptocurrency Exchanges And Market Participants, Robert Sistoso

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The rise of cryptocurrencies has led to the development of both centralized and decentralized exchanges, which face significant regulatory challenges under U.S. securities laws. The SEC has applied the Howey test to determine whether tokens qualify as securities, and its enforcement actions, such as against EtherDelta, highlight the need for clarity on the liabilities of developers, operators, and users in decentralized systems. The article advocates for the SEC to refine its regulatory approach to balance investor protection with the promotion of innovation in blockchain technology.

Fashion's Brand Heritage, Cultural Heritage, And The Piracy Paradox, Felicia Caponigri

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

This Article explores the role that heritage has on our understanding of the appropriateness of intellectual property protection for fashion designs in light of Christopher Sprigman and Kal Raustiala's seminal work in The Piracy Paradox. At times, heritage seems to both reinforce Sprigman and Raustiala's argument that fashion thrives in a low-IP regime and, at other times, heritage challenges that argument. Taking Italian fashion design as a case study, this Article considers the intersection of brand heritage, cultural heritage, and intellectual property law and makes three central observations. First, that fashion designs reflecting brand heritage thrive in a low-IP …

Where Code Is Chaos: Content Platforms And Algorithmic Incentives, Amy L. Landers

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

This Article considers the intersection of the piracy paradox in the context of the attention economy, the algorithmic behavior of content platforms, and intellectual property's incentive theory. This inquiry is framed by a micro-history of a micro-dispute between two micro-celebrities about a color-block sweatshirt design of debatable originality. Because purchases are largely made to engage and support the creator as interactive communication, the arguments for legal protection for influencer merchandise are weak. Therefore, this field appears to be an ideal space for the operation of the piracy paradox.

This conclusion might be persuasive if anti-copying norms or other considerations minimized …

Fashion, Models, And Intellectual Property, Andres Sawicki

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

In this Article, I revisit the impact of Professor Kal Raustiala and Professor Christopher Sprigman 's landmark article, The Piracy Paradox. Their work identified an empirical anomaly that was difficult to explain in light of the standard justification for intellectual property rights: although IP law does not grant meaningful exclusivity in novel fashion designs, the fashion industry invests significant resources developing those novel designs. To account for this anomaly, The Piracy Paradox shifted the focus from the supply side of innovation to the demand side. The standard justification emphasized that innovators face threats of copying that they cannot easily mitigate; …

"Gigi, Over Here!": Celebrity Use Of Copyrighted Paparazzi Photographs, Dylan B. Reich

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note argues that celebrities should have limited rights to use paparazzi-taken photos of themselves, balancing their rights with those of photographers. It proposes that non-commercial use by celebrities could be permissible under certain legal doctrines.

From A Circuit Split To A District Split: Amending Copyright Lawsuits After Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation V. Wall-Street.Com, Llc, Habeeb Sheikh

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note examines the legal implications of the Supreme Court's decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, which resolved a circuit split by adopting the "registration approach" for copyright lawsuits. This approach requires a copyright registration to be granted by the Copyright Office before a lawsuit can be filed. The article argues that lower courts are now divided on whether plaintiffs can amend their complaints to include newly registered copyrights after the initial filing, and it advocates for allowing such amendments to ensure fairness and efficiency in the judicial process.

Trademark Enforcement And Statutory Incentives, Leah Chan Grinvald

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The combination of the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Romag Fasteners v. Fossil Group, Inc., and the diamond anniversary of the Lanham Act provides good grounds to reflect on how trademark enforcement and statutory incentives have evolved through the years. Although enforcement of one's trademarks through the use of the courts can be traced back to England in the 1790s, trademark litigation and other enforcement activities have exploded, in relative terms, since the enactment of the Lanham Act in 1946. Although not subject to an easy empirical correlation, this trend suggests that the statute has had an impact on increasing …

Registration And Federalization: 75 Years Of The Lanham Act, Mark P. Mckenna, Brittany Von Rueden

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The Lanham Act, enacted 75 years ago, aimed to enhance notice and uniformity in trademark law, primarily through improved registration processes. However, its goals were only partially met. While it successfully federalized trademark law, it fell short in emphasizing registration due to court interpretations that allowed enforcement of unregistered marks, leading to a more complex and expanded scope of trademark protection.

Mark Talk, Alexandra J. Roberts

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article argues that trademark law should evolve to incorporate "mark talk"—consumer discussions and usage of trademarks on social media and online platforms—as a key factor in determining secondary meaning. Traditional methods, such as advertising expenditures and sales data, are critiqued for their limitations in the digital age. The author advocates for updating legal frameworks to reflect contemporary consumer interactions, emphasizing that mark talk provides direct evidence of consumer perception and a mark's distinctiveness. However, courts and the USPTO have been slow to adopt these modern approaches, highlighting a disconnect between legal practices and the realities of digital communication.

The Intellectual Property Of Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The response to COVID-19 is indissolubly tied to intellectual property. In an increasingly globalized world in which infectious disease pathogens travel faster and wider than before, the development of vaccines, treatments and other forms of medical technology has become an integral part of public health preparedness and response frameworks. The development of these technologies, and to a certain extent the allocation and distribution of resulting outputs, is informed by intellectual property regimes. These regimes influence the commitment of R&D resources, shape scientific collaborations and, in some cases, may condition the widespread availability of emerging technologies. As seen throughout this chapter, …

The Law Of Employee Data: Privacy, Property, Governance, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The availability of data related to the employment relationship has ballooned into an unruly mass of personal characteristics, performance metrics, biometric recordings, and creative output. The law governing this collection of information has been awkwardly split between privacy regulations and intellectual property rights, with employees generally losing on both ends. This Article rejects a binary approach that either carves out private spaces ineffectually or renders data into isolated pieces of ownership. Instead, the law should implement a hybrid system that provides workers with continuing input and control without blocking efforts at joint production. In addition, employers should have fiduciary responsibilities …

Intellectual Property As A Determinant Of Health, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Public health literature has long recognized the existence of determinants of health, a set of socio-economic conditions that affect health risks and health outcomes across the world. The World Health Organization defines these determinants as “forces and systems” consisting of “factors combin[ing] together to affect the health of individuals and communities.” Frameworks relying on determinants of health have been widely adopted by countries in the global South and North alike, as well as international institutional players, several of which are direct or indirect players in transnational intellectual property (IP) policymaking. Issues raised by the implementation of IP policies, however, are …