Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Adequacy Of The 1995 Antitrust Guidelines For The Licensing Of Intellectual Property In Complex High Tech Markets, Clovia Hamilton

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

In 1995, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission adopted new guidelines for those wishing to license intellectual property rights without violating antitrust laws. Designed to provide clarity, these guidelines instead breed confusion because they misunderstand the nature of intellectual property markets and provide insufficient guidance in the most difficult areas. Section I of this article will discuss the basic provisions of the guidelines, especially their treatment of "innovation markets." It argues that government enforcers should focus primarily on activity that creates entry barriers. Understanding the use and misuse of licensing is the key to analyzing barriers in …

Excuse And Justification In The Law Of Fair Use: Commodification And Market Perspectives, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Over twenty years ago, the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. reprinted my article, "Fair Use as Market Failure" (82 Columbia Law Review 1600 (1982), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3577724. That 1982 piece suggested that an underlying pattern governs the protean forms of "fair use", and I employed the notion of market failure to reveal and explain how the pattern functioned. Since then, some misunderstandings of my argument have arisen.

I am pleased to publish in this, the Fiftieth Anniversary issue of the Journal of the Copyright Society, a clarification – and partial amendment – of my position. As …

U.S. Plant Variety Protection: Sound And Fury...?, Mark D. Janis, Jay P. Kesan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article offers a critical reassessment of U.S. approaches to intellectual property protection for plant innovation. Three developments make this reassessment timely. First, the Supreme Court has finally confirmed that utility patent claims to plants and seeds satisfy the 35 U.S.C. Section 101 subject matter eligibility requirement. Plant innovation in the United States is now subject to utility patent protection, as well as concurrent protection under the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA). However, little work has been done to explain the role of PVPA protection in a system of concurrent protection, or to develop a coherent policy vision within which …

Congress Trips Over International Law: Wto Finds Unfairness In Music Licensing Act, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

Intellectual property law reform in the United States frequently involves balancing the interest rights of holders against the interests of users. As international agreements play an increasingly important role in the development of domestic intellectual property law, striking this balance has become a more complicated process.

Whereas, a few decades ago, resolving the competing needs of owners and users often could be accomplished purely as a matter of domestic policy – whether the outcome was based on high-minded principle, interest group politics, or simple pragmatism – today the proposed resolution to such a conflict more often than not must be …

Liberty And Property In The Patent Law, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Patents have seldom troubled civil libertarians. A specialized form of property, patents seemed pertinent to the technologies of traditional industry but little else. Patent instruments offered their readers mere technical documentation; patent cases presented no more than the mapping of a text onto an instantiated artifact; patent policy was principally oriented toward economic optimization of the length and scope of protection. Unbound from technology, contemporary patent law now seems a more robust discipline. Modern patent instruments appropriate a diverse array of techniques that span the entire range of human endeavor. Patent claims, cut loose from physical moorings, have grown more …

The Responsibility Of The Rulemaker: Comparative Approaches To Patent Administration Reform, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Patent administrators across the globe currently face the most challenging operating environment they have ever known. Soaring application rates, lean fiscal policies and an increasingly ambitious range of patentable subject matter are among the difficulties faced by the world's leading patent offices. These trends have resulted in persistent concerns over the quality of issued patents. Responding to recent writings questioning the value of maintaining high levels of patent quality, Professor Jay Thomas asserts both that patent quality matters, and that increasing the responsibilities of patent applicants provides a fair and efficient mechanism for improving patent office work product. This Article …

The Electronic Jungle: The Application Of Intellectual Property Law To Distance Education, Jon Garon

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The tension between academic institutions as creators and consumers of intellectual property seems to be most directly felt in the new areas of distance education. Despite the significant opportunities to use new media to expand the reach of the classroom to an ever-growing body of students, concerns regarding copyright, trademark and defamation law continue to limit and dictate what schools attempt to do. These limitations are more directly felt by individual instructors, who must enforce appropriate usage policies for their students, create copyrighted materials and negotiate with their schools over the ownership of the valuable content created.

This Article has …

Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.

The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …

Cyberproperty And Judicial Dissonance: The Trouble With Domain Name Classification, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The nature of cyberspace continues to be woven into the fabric of our daily existence. Not surprisingly, cyberspace and the expansion of e-commerce pose challenges to existing law, particularly the legal definition of cyberproperty domain names. The nature of cyberspace allows many e-companies to possess no traditional assets such as buildings and inventories. Some e-companies own few computers, often using service providers to maintain their web sites. In the virtual space that e-companies inhabit, the primary assets that e-companies own are intangibles such as domain names, customer information, and intellectual property that includes business method patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Domain …

Trademark Exhaustion In The European Union: Community-Wide Or International?The Saga Continues, Irene Calboli

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Article analyzes the principle of "trademark exhaustion" or "first-sale rule" in the European Union (EU), with particular attention to the language and different interpretations of Article 7(1) of the First Council Directive 89 104 EEC of December 21, 1988. Traditionally, most jurisdictions define the extent of trademark exhaustion as either "national" or "international" exhaustion, depending on whether the rights granted by a mark are considered exhausted only in the domestic territory or also in foreign jurisdictions. Because of its nature as a regional integration of sovereign countries, the EU has historically favored a compromising approach toward the issue, and …

Trademark Exhaustion In The European Union: Community-Wide Or International? The Saga Continues, Irene Calboli

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Article analyzes the principle of "trademark exhaustion" or "first-sale rule" in the European Union (EU), with particular attention to the language and different interpretations of Article 7(1) of the First Council Directive 89 104 EEC of December 21, 1988. Traditionally, most jurisdictions define the extent of trademark exhaustion as either "national" or "international" exhaustion, depending on whether the rights granted by a mark are considered exhausted only in the domestic territory or also in foreign jurisdictions. Because of its nature as a regional integration of sovereign countries, the EU has historically favored a compromising approach toward the issue, and …

Authors, Publishers And Public Goods: Trading Gold For Dross, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The article seeks to clarify what is at stake - and what is not - in the litigation challenging the constitutional validity of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). First, the article distinguishes between the CTEA's retrospective term extension of copyright term and the retrospective extensions enacted by prior Congresses. The article suggests that the CTEA provisions are constitutionally questionable in ways that earlier retrospective extensions may not have been. To hold the CTEA unconstitutional would not make all other term extensions vulnerable.

Second, the article shows how non-creative physical activities such as digitization and film preservation have …

Informing Law Curricula: Modifying First-Year Courses To Reflect The Information Revolution, William B.T. Mock

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Current Developments In Cyberspace, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Rights In The Middle East: A Cultural Perspective, John Carroll

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Protection Of Intellectual Property: The Case Of China And Taiwan In Light Of Wto Accession, Andy Y. Sun

Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies

No abstract provided.

Collusion And Collective Action In The Patent System: A Proposal For Patent Bounties, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Persistent commentary contends that the Patent Office is issuing patents that appropriate public domain concepts at an alarming frequency. Complaints of low patent quality enjoy growing resonance with regard to business methods, computer software, and other inventions for which patents were not traditionally sought. In this article, Professor Jay Thomas explains how the judiciary's lenient view of patentable subject matter and utility standards, along with miserly congressional funding policies, have rendered the Patent Office an increasingly porous agency. Professor Thomas next reviews existing proposals for improving patent quality, including the conventional wisdom that adoption of an opposition system will contribute …

Fair Use Infrastructure For Rights Management Systems, Dan L. Burk, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper, we consider whether rights management systems can be supported by legal and institutional infrastructures that enable appropriate public access to the works secured by these technologies. We focus primarily on the design challenges posed by the fair use doctrine, which historically has played a central role in preserving such access. Throughout the paper, however, we also use the term "fair use" to refer more generally to the variety of limiting doctrines within copyright law that serve this goal. We begin in Part II by reviewing the contours of the fair use doctrine and the legal and policy …

Preserving The Public Trust In State-Owned Intellectual Property: A Recommendation For Legislative Action, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

Whether a state chooses to dedicate its intellectual property to the public domain or derive revenue from the licensing of its rights, absent express authority on the subject there is uncertainty. State employees who are aware of the existence of state-owned intellectual property are not certain how it should be managed or if they are authorized to expend state resources to pursue infringement claims. Individuals and entities who wish to use state-owned intellectual property do not know how to obtain permission for such use and without permission they cannot be certain that they will not be sued for infringement. Without …

Internet Business Model Patents: Obvious By Analogy, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

Part I of this Article provides a look at Internet business model patents in light of key patentability requirements mandated by the Patent Act. Part II traces the evolution of the analogous art component of the non-obviousness determination and illustrates how the malleability of the doctrine, as exemplified in several Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decisions, has particular relevance to prior art definitions for Internet business model patents. Part III of this Article then examines the doctrine of equivalents and explores how the likelihood of improper application of this doctrine in the Internet business model context is increased. …

Introduction: From Sheet Music To Mp3 Files—A Brief Perspective On Napster, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Napster case is the current cause celebre of the digital age. The story has color. It involves music-sharing technology invented by an eighteen-year-old college dropout whose high school classmates nicknamed him "The Napster" on account of his perpetually kinky hair. The story has drama. Depending on your perspective, it pits rapacious big music companies against poor and hardworking students who just want to enjoy some tunes; or it pits creative and industrious music companies seeking a fair return on their invested effort, time, and money against greedy and irreverent music thieves. And the case has importance. Music maybe intellectual …

Antitrust And Intellectual Property: Unresolved Issues At The Heart Of The New Economy, Robert Pitofsky

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The New Economy differs in degree rather than kind from the "old" economy. Part II of this discussion examines the key differences that define the New Economy. Part Ill turns to several implications of those differences as they pertain to antitrust enforcement. I argue that the differences do not justify sweeping generalizations that antitrust enforcement has no place in the New Economy, but do require antitrust enforcement to make adjustments and exercise sensitivity towards intellectual property issues on a case-by-case basis. The goal of a coherent overall competition policy, in deciding both what conduct to enforce against and what remedies …

Patent Scope And Innovation In The Software Industry, Julie E. Cohen, Mark A. Lemley

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Software patents have received a great deal of attention in the academic literature. Unfortunately, most of that attention has been devoted to the problem of whether software is or should be patentable subject matter. With roughly eighty thousand software patents already issued, and the Federal Circuit endorsing patentability without qualification, those questions are for the history books. The more pressing questions now concern the scope to be accorded software patents. In this Article, we examine the implications of some traditional patent law doctrines for innovation in the software industry. We argue that patent law needs some refinement if it is …

The Recording Artist Agreement: Does It Empower Or Enslave, Lynn Morrow

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In June 2000, Courtney Love, the controversial lead singer of the rock group Hole, lambasts, among other things, record company profits. In an essay entitled "Courtney Love Does the Math," she maintains that a recording artist agreement is itself a form of music piracy. She tells a compelling story about a band and a record company. As a result of a bidding war between the major labels, the band was given what is considered a huge deal-a twenty percent artist royalty and a million dollar advance. Providing a breakdown of how the million dollars was spent, Ms. Love calculates that, …

Challenges Of The New Economy: Issues At The Intersection Of Antitrust And Intellectual Property, Robert Pitofsky

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is wide agreement that the last decade or so has presented an unusually lively and challenging period for antitrust analysis. Among many reasons we can point to are deregulation and problems of transition to a free market (telecommunications and electricity production offer leading examples), developments in procedural cooperation and possible substantive convergence in response to the increasing globalization of competition and enforcement approaches, and priorities in addressing an unprecedented merger wave. An additional challenge involves the application of established antitrust principles to the growing high-tech sector of the economy. It is that application of antitrust law to the new …

Japanese Intellectual Property Law In Translation: Representative Cases And Commentary, Kenneth L. Port

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Like much of Japanese law, Japanese intellectual property law is often criticized as being inaccessible. This inaccessibility has contributed to the misperception that Japanese case law regarding intellectual property does not exist. Even if it exists, the perception goes, it takes forever to track down and it is nearly irrelevant.

This Commentary, in a very modest way, is aimed at debunking the myth that Japanese case law regarding intellectual property is either non-existent or less meaningful than its U.S. counterpart. This Commentary consists of five translations of recent, significant intellectual property cases, as well as commentary regarding the relevance and …

The Pharmaceutical Industry And World Intellectual Property Standards, F. M. Scherer

Vanderbilt Law Review

When I was a high school student during the late 1940s, the first so-called "wonder drugs"-initially penicillin and then the broad-spectrum antibiotics such as tetracycline-were entering the U.S. market. From their profitable experience developing the broad- spectrum antibiotics, the leading pharmaceutical companies of America and Europe acquired a strong research orientation that led to a cascade of new therapeutic entities, including additional anti-infectives, vaccines, diuretics, and then other agents to reduce heart attack risks, tranquilizers, antidepressants, birth control pills, anti-fungal agents, immuno suppressants, corticosteroids, AIDS inhibitors, powerful pain relief agents, and many other agents effective against specific diseases. Thanks to …

Patent Policy Innovations: A Clinical Examination, Josh Lerner

Vanderbilt Law Review

On the domestic front, the dispute has centered on the question of whether the United States should honor commitments made in bi- lateral agreements with Japan to remove idiosyncratic features of its patent system. In particular, legislation to require the publication of pending patent applications and to grant awards to the party that is first to file for an award (as are the practices in most nations) have been fiercely debated in the past few congressional sessions. In the developing nations, the requirements for minimal levels of patent protection in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariff and …

Lessons From Studying The International Economics Of Intellectual Property Rights

Vanderbilt Law Review

When the Uruguay Round negotiations began in 1986, the subject of intellectual property rights ("IPRs") was completely unfamiliar to international trade economists. Presumably the area was ignored because global trade policy concerns had not moved into questions of domestic business regulation. Even today, readers will search in vain for serious treatments of the trade implications of exclusive rights to intellectual property ("IP") in international economics textbooks.

Despite this general inattention, a small but growing literature has emerged in which trade economists have framed specific questions and applied theory and statistical analysis to them. This literature has advanced the understanding of …

Cruel, Mean, Or Lavish? Economic Analysis, Price Discrimination And Digital Intellectual Property, James Boyle

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches .... What the company is trying to do is to prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from travelling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich .... And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to third-class passengers and mean …