Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Intellectual Property As Price Discrimination: Implications For Contract, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

As people become enamored with the possible benefits of allowing price discrimination in contracts for intellectual goods, they should realize that traditional intellectual property law works by fostering price discrimination among customers. This simple fact has implications for federal pre-emption, and is a reminder of the complexity of the economic issues involved. Increasing a seller's ability to price discriminate will often involve increasing his monopoly power, with dubious welfare effects.

Withdrawal Of The Reference: Rights, Rules, And Remedies For Unwelcomed Web-Linking, Walter Effross

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Price Discrimination, Personal Use And Piracy: Copyright Protection Of Digital Works, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

The growth of digital information transmission worries copyright holders who fear the new technology threatens their profits because of greater piracy and widespread sharing of digital works. They have responded with proposals for expanded protection of digital works. Specifically, they seek restrictions on personal use rights regarding digital works provided by the fair use and first sale doctrines. The proposed changes in the allocation of property rights to digital information significantly affect the ability of copyright holders to practice price discrimination. Broader user rights make discrimination more difficult; broader producer rights make discrimination easier. I argue that more price discrimination …

The Wto, Wipo & The Internet: Confounding The Borders Of Copyright And Neighboring Rights, Susan A. Mort

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Copyright In Central And Eastern Europe: An Intellectual Property Metamorphosis , Silke Von Lewinski

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regents Guide To Understanding Copyright And Educational Fair Use, L. Ray Patterson

Scholarly Works

The Regents Guide to Copyright and Educational Fair Use, adopted by the Regents of the University System of Georgia, is the most comprehensive statement on copyright and educational fair use ever adopted by a major university system. The purpose of this comment is to provide a brief background for readers and users of the document.

The Regents Copyright Committee, appointed by Dr. James Muyskens, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University System of Georgia, continues in existence and has eight members, who represent a cross-section of the university community, and include administrators (two of whom are lawyers), faculty (two of …

Linking Copyright To Homepages, Matt Jackson

Federal Communications Law Journal

The explosive growth of the Internet as a widespread medium of communication raises many novel copyright issues. One issue that has escaped much examination is the copyright implications of "links"--references to other Internet Web sites that allow immediate access to those sites. This Comment analyzes such questions as whether linking gives rise to direct or contributory liability to the copyright owner of a linked site, and whether the links themselves are copyrightable. It concludes that, although contributory liability is possible, linking cannot constitute a direct infringement any more than dialing a phone number to reach an answering machine with a …

Of Moral Right And Righteousness, Sharon W. Halpern

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In response to Professor Kwall's article, Professor Halpern provides an exploration of the differences between European countries that provide broad moral right protection and the United States. Professor Halpern recommends an examination of the role artists and creators of intellectual property play in the culture of the United States in order to form a consensus on which a United States moral right regime may be built.

Rethinking Remedies At The Intersection Of Intellectual Property And Contract: Toward A Unified Body Of Law, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

As society continues to move "on-line"' and technology advances in fields such as biotechnology, a paradigm shift is occurring. Investors are focusing less on asset valuations based on the physical goods owned by a particular firm and more on the value of intangibles-the information and know-how possessed by the firm and embodied in its intellectual property rights. Firms and even entire industries have grown up with the primarily paper assets of patents and copyrights.

Battling International Piracy Of The Copyright Industries Through Nafta, Donna L. Eng

UF Law Faculty Publications

The scope of this paper will cover the United States' attempts to protect its copyright industries of computer software, movie, and music under the auspices of NAFTA. Specifically, coverage will discuss the general scope of copyright protection given to the software, music, and movie industries under NAFTA, and then focus on United States relations with Canada and Mexico under NAFTA.

Cyberspace Must Exceed Its Grasp, Or What's A Metaphor? Tropes, Trips And Stumbles On The Info Highway, Robert C. Cumbow

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay will focus on three metaphors, and show briefly how the arguments that copyright law is “unworkable” in the Internet context are based on a misreading of these metaphors. The first metaphor is the use of the term “cyberspace” to apply to the Internet; the second is the tendency to describe Internet communication as “going” somewhere. Both of these metaphors mistakenly suggest a space in which enforcement—and, indeed, violation—of any law is impossible. The third metaphor is the “wine and bottles” analogy, set forth by John Perry Barlow in his widely circulated article, “The Economy of Ideas," to show …

Forms Of Redress For Design Piracy: How Victims Can Use Existing Copyright Law, Peter K. Schalestock

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Comment explores the nature and scope of design piracy in the fashion industry. It also discusses the impact of modem technology on pirates and their victims. Part II reviews the existing intellectual property legal framework, emphasizing copyright law and its application to clothing design. Part III discusses the exclusion of clothing design from copyright protection and reviews cases that have addressed that issue. Finally, Part IV suggests ways that designers might obtain greater protection. The alternatives explored are (1) the proper application of existing law to find separable protectable design elements, and (2) congressional action to …

Intellectual Property Rights In Data?, J. H. Reichman, Pamela Samuelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The international intellectual property system founded on the Paris and Berne Conventions in the late nineteenth century has been dominated by the patent and copyright paradigms, which articulate the legal protection of technological inventions and of literary and artistic works, respectively. Although this patent-copyright dichotomy was never as strictly observed abroad as in the United States, it nonetheless charted a relatively clear theoretical line of demarcation between legal incentives to create and the public interest in free competition. Any publicly disclosed technologies or information products that failed to meet the eligibility requirements of the domestic patent and copyright laws became …

Computer Science Concepts In Copyright Cases: The Path To A Coherent Law, Marci A. Hamilton, Ted Sabety

Articles

No abstract provided.

On The Economics Of Copyright, Restitution And "Fair Use": Systemic Versus Case-By-Case Responses To Market Failure, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The 'public goods' characteristics possess by intangible works of authorship and invention present the basic market failure problem usually relied on to justify intellectual property rights. What is ordinarily less emphasized is that such market failure is no more than half of the prerequisite for an economically desirable copyright or patent system: another requisite condition is that there be less costly market imperfections after intellectual property is instituted than there would have been in the absence of the intellectual property regime. Intellectual property rights are best justified in the presence of "asymmetric market conditions", that is where (1) in the …

Procd, Inc. V. Zeindenberg: An Emerging Trend In Shrinkwrap Licensing?, Jerry David Monroe

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

The author discusses the implications of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's decision in ProCD, Inc. v. Zeindenberg. As Monroe explains, until this decision, the courts have been reluctant to uphold the legal consequences of shrinkwrap licenses. Monroe provides an analysis of the interplay between contract law and copyright law to provide a thorough understanding of this emerging trend in intellectual property.

Protecting Folklore Of Indigenous Peoples: Is Intellectual Property The Answer?, Christine Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What can the Navajos do to prevent non-Navajos from using Navajo rug patterns to produce rugs overseas using cheap material and labor, thereby undercutting the Navajos themselves in a market for their famous rugs? What can the Australian Aboriginal peoples do when their sacred and secret imagery is reporduced on carpets they did not make, and sold to non-Aboriginals, who will inevitably walk on them? Do these communities have any legal rights to these pieces of their culture? Does the law provide any means for them to take back their culture or to prevent further poaching? https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=923410

The Internet: Is It Broadcasting?, Jonathan I. Ezor, Peter Brown, Peggy Miles

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Licensing Issues On The Internet, Steven Masur, Neil J. Friedman, Judith M. Saffer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Plagiarism: It May Be Fair Use But Is It Ethical?, Jaime S. Dursht

Cardozo Law Review

Plagiarism is the intentional appropriation of the creative product or scholarship of another without attribution. Judicial plagiarism arises when judges author opinions that employ materials from copyrighted sources such as law journals or books, but neglect to give credit to the author. In opinion writing-a form of writing in which use and citation to authority is customary-the offense of plagiarism lies simply in neglecting to identify the source. In the academic world, plagiarism is considered to be a "capital offense, punishable by academic death for student or faculty," and it is treated no more favorably in professions in which responsible …

National Sovereignty And Transnational Problem Solving, Judith H. Bello

Cardozo Law Review

Many of the most difficult problems that challenge nation states in the increasingly interdependent world do not respect borders: illicit drug trafficking, refugees, illegal immigration, environmental degradation, illegal arms sales, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, bribery, and corruption. Nation states acting alone are helpless to resolve or most effectively alleviate these problems.

Reviving The Rhetoric Of The Public Interest: Choir Directors, Copy Machines, And New Arrangements Of Public Domain Music, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

The decision to photocopy or not to photocopy has significant consequences for the music consumer's pocketbook. Photocopies cost around three cents per page, while an original printed version of a choral work costs about thirty cents per page. The expense of buying rather than copying public domain sheet music is directly absorbed by the taxpayers who fund music education in public schools, the church congregations who must raise money for the church music budget, and the patrons of the fine arts who finance music ensembles with their admission fees or donations.

To recognize the high cost of sheet music is …

Privileged Use: Has Judge Boudin Suggested A Viable Means Of Copyright Protection For The Nonliteral Aspects Of Computer Software In Lotus Development Corp.V. Borland International , David M. Maiorana

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Free Speech Rights, L. Ray Patterson, Stanley F. Birch, Jr.

Scholarly Works

By letter of 1 March 1993, the Copyright Compliance Office of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) informed a copyshop that it had “without prior permission, made multiple copies of excerpts of copyrighted works for distribution to students in course anthologies.” Stating that this copying was an infringement of copyright, the letter requested the copyshop to sign an enclosed agreement stating it would not commit such acts again and to pay a penalty of “$2,500 to help defray the costs of the AAP's copyright enforcement program in this matter and to impress on your business the need to operate in …

The Trips Agreement: Imperialistic, Outdated, And Overprotective, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

According to Professor Hamilton, the TRIPS Agreement constructs international copyright law in the image of Western, Protestant-based capitalist copyright law. She suggests that the Agreement Imposes presuppositions about human value, effort, and reward that contain political, sociological, and legal ramifications. In fact, the Agreement, with its focus upon valuing individual human creative achievement, could spur further developments in Westernbased human rights in the rest of the world. By transplanting Western ideas to the rest of the world, TRIPS may actually encourage anti-authoritarian revolution.

She further suggests that the TRIPS Agreement seeks to establish a free market of intellectual property goods. …

Reexamining Copyright's Incentives-Access Paradigm, Glynn S. Lunney, Jr., Glynn Lunney

Vanderbilt Law Review

For the past three centuries, defining the appropriate scope of copyright has entailed an examination of incentives and access.' Broadening the scope of copyright increases the incentive to produce works of authorship and results in a greater variety of such works. Broadening copyright's scope, however, also limits access to such works both generally, by increasing their price, and specifically, by limiting the material that others can use to create additional works. Given these competing considerations, defining copyright's proper scope has become a matter of balancing the benefits of broader protection, in the form of increased incentive to produce such works, …

The Impact Of Recent Litigation On Interlibrary Loan And Document Delivery, James S. Heller

Faculty Publications

Professor Heller discusses how two recent federal copyright law decisions, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music in the United States Supreme Court and American Geophysical Union v. Texaco in the Second Circuit, may affect the interlibrary loan and document delivery services provided by libraries.

Caught In The Net Of Copyright, Peter Jaszi

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As an overture to this Comment, I'd like to begin with one of my favorite passages from the recent National Information Infrastructure (NII)Task Force Working Group Report on Intellectual Property and the NII-the so-called White Paper.' The passage is not one of the deceptively bland legislative proposals-nor one of the strategic half-truths in the purported summary of current copyright law. Rather, it is a passage from the section on copyright awareness, and it is an excellent example of a good idea gone wrong. The good idea is that our elementary and secondary schools could take a role in preparing students …

Deconstructing The Fair Use Doctrine:  The Cost Of Personal And Workplace Copying After American Geophysical Union V. Texaco, Inc., Nicole B. Cásarez

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Recent Changes In The Duration Of Copyright In The United States And European Union:  Procedure And Policy, Lisa M. Brownlee

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.