Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Gatt And Nafta Provisions On Intellectual Property, Emery Simon

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Interplay Between Intellectual Property Rights And Free Movement Of Goods In The European Community, Roger J. Goebel

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Panel Commentaries, Morton David Goldberg, Robert J. Hart, Jean-Francois Verstrynge

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Trips Component Of The Gatt’S Uruguay Round: Competitive Prospects For Intellectual Property Owners In An Integrated World Market, J.H. Reichman

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Trade, Trips And Nafta, Joel R. Reidenberg

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legislative Process And Commercial Law: Lessons From The Copyright Act Of 1976 And The Uniform Commercial Code, Harold R. Weinberg, William J. Woodward Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Overlap and conflict are inevitable in any legal system in which a federal government and state governments both have authority to enact laws. In our federal system, the Constitution's Supremacy Clause identifies federal law as preeminent in case of conflict. When conflict develops and litigation is required to determine whether state or federal law controls the issue at hand, our system analyzes the problem using the term preemption as a basis for analysis.

This Article explores the federal legislative process that precedes judicial preemption decisions. By studying the legislative process for its sensitivity to preemption issues, possible ways to modify …

The History Of The Patent Harmonization Treaty: Economic Self-Interest As An Influence, R. Carl Moy

Faculty Scholarship

How shall the United States decide whether to adopt the Patent Harmonization Treaty? What questions shall we ask? Whose answers shall we trust? What sources of information can provide us with the background needed for these inquiries? This article offers a framework in which to ask, and begin to answer, these questions. It focuses on the international community's past efforts to harmonize the law of patents. It asserts not only that history provides context, but also, that the same history yields lessons directly applicable to many of the treaty's basic issues. Section I discusses the immediate history of WIPO's efforts …

A Property Right In Self-Expression: Equality And Individualism In The Natural Law Of Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that a properly conceived natural-rights theory of intellectual property would provide significant protection for free speech interests. This is more than just an academic exercise. Judges have failed to use the First Amendment to provide extensive protection for free expression in intellectual property cases, in part because they mistakenly find a warrant for strong "authors' rights" in a philosophy of natural law. Natural rights theory, however, is necessarily concerned with the rights of the public as well as with those whose labors create intellectual products. When the limitations in natural law's premises are taken seriously, natural rights …

Expanding The Use Of Hypothetical Analysis When Evaluating Patent Infringement Under The Doctrine Of Equivalents, Brian E. Lewis

Seattle University Law Review

Accordingly, the purpose of this Comment is twofold: first, to bring the reader up-to-date on the doctrine of equivalents, and second, to suggest an improvement on the doctrine's application that is consistent with recent developments. This Comment proposes that the hypothetical technique should be expanded to evaluate more than prior art alone. Before exploring how this new use of the hypothetical would work, however, it is necessary to explain the doctrine of equivalents' history, the factors that affect the range of equivalents, and the methods to determine and apply equivalents.

The Illegitimacy Of Trademark Incontestability, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of incontestability in American trademark law has caused great confusion ever since its adoption as part of United States trademark law in 1946. This Article is first a study of the rational basis for incontestability in American trademark law. The role of incontestability in the larger regime of American trademark law is established in order to understand incontestability as it fits within the history of the common law of trademarks. This is fundamental in order to understand the significance of the thesis that incontestability is illegitimate. Next, acquisition of incontestability is presented in order to show how simple …

What's New In Intellectual Property - Business Is Booming In Copyright, Trademark And Patent Law, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Forget the trendy law practice areas of the 1980s, such as mergers and acquisitions, real estate and antitrust. Intellectual property is where the action will be in the 1990s.

Preface: Symposium On Intellectual Property Law Theory, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

For primary contributors to this symposium we have sought out people whose thoughts on intellectual property are not well known to readers of the standard law reviews. We are very gratified by the results. Of our three philosopher contributors, none has published much explicitly discussing intellectual property before, though the work of each of them is highly relevant to the topic; our economist, who publishes most often in philosophic, economic and communications journals, here brings his various perspectives to bear; our practitioner contributor proves that the most esoteric of academic topics - postmodern literary theory - has relevance to everyday …

Letter From Professor Timothy J. Brennan, Timothy J. Brennan

Scholarship Chronologically

Dear Wendy,

Thanks for sending me the recent pair of articles. I just had a chance to read them today while I'm getting my furnace and AC replaced. I enjoyed them very much, both for the chance to think about copyright issues and to read yet again your creative and insightful approach to them.

The most intriguing thing about the Dayton piece was the asymmetric mar- ket failure idea. (I'll come back to the prisoners' dilemma in connection with the LCP paper!) Your point that justifying copyright requires the belief that intellectual property markets won't work without copyright and that …

Letter To Ms. Sheddy Murphy On Paper For Cd-Rom Symposium, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

As you know, I am revising the piece primarily by combining it with my oral remarks. Thus I am sending you the original version of the article as you sent it to me, with corrections inked in, and I am also sending several separate typed pages (adapted from the oral remarks), with indications where they fit into the piece. The new pages have several footnotes, but in most cases the footnotes refer to sources cited in the earlier version. I can also send you photocopies of any material cited, if you wish. I hope this is not too burdensome. The …

Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

When competitors engage in unrestrained copying of each others' intangible products, the structure can resemble a prisoner's dilemma in which free choice leads to unnecessarily low individual payoffs and low social welfare. There are many ways to avoid these low payoffs, such as contract enforcement, direct regulation of copying behavior through IP, and direct government subsidies. All of these modes alter the payoff pattern away from prisoner's dilemma.

When should lawmakers place copyright law or other IP law among the prime options to consider?

Because copyright, patent, misappropriation and the like all work through private-property markets, one key is to …

Cd-Rom Symposium Transcript Two - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

MR. METALITZ: I think the point there is that amputation of authorship is really kind of an artifact of the registration process. You wouldn't be that concerned.

On Owning Information: Intellectual Property And The Restitutionary Impulse, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Every day someone invests time, labor, or money in creating a valuable intangible. Someone collects information, creates an idea, designs a boat hull, writes a book, or comes up with a new way to market a product that someone else developed. Judicial treatment of these and other cognate occurrences has shifted dramatically in recent years.

Intellectual Property Protection Or Protectionism? Declaratory Judgment Use By Patent Owners Against Prospective Infringers, Lawrence M. Sung

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Handwritten Notes On Of Harms And Benefits: Torts, Restitution, And Intellectual Property - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Copyright and patent take the form of ordinary property. As tangible property has physical edges, intellectual property statutes create boundaries by defining the subject matters within their zone of protection. As real property owners have rights to prevent strangers from entering their land. intellectual property statutes and case law grant owners rights to exclude strangers from using the protected work in specified ways. As tangible property can be bought and sold, bequeathed and inherited, so can copyrights and patents.

The Patentability And Patent Term Extension Of Lifesaving Drugs: A Deadly Mistake, Jonathan L. Mezrich

Journal of Law and Health

The pharmaceutical business is dominated largely by two types of entities: large, research-intensive corporations, and the smaller "generic" drug "knock-off" artists. because the former organizations have to put so much of their budget into research and development (R&D), a form of investment which is often akin to pouring money into a hole, the 17-year exclusive monopoly of a patient is often the only way such a company can remain profitable. However, because of a concern for public safety, all substances prepared for human consumption must be put through extensive testing by the FDA. This testing could take a long period …

The Viability Of The Copyright Misuse Defense, David Scher

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Under the equitable doctrine of "unclean hands," courts will deny an otherwise meritorious claim where the claimant has acted so improperly that the need to punish the claimant’s wrongful behavior outweighs the need to punish the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct. The principle underlying the doctrine is that equity presumes harm when an unclean plaintiff obtains relief; consequently, one who desires justice must come into court with a “clean slate.” The theory of intellectual property misuse, which stems from the “unclean hands” doctrine, prevents a plaintiff from enforcing an intellectual property right if that plaintiff is guilty of misconduct with respect …

Hungarian Legal Reform For The Private Sector, Cheryl W. Gray, Rebecca J. Hanson, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Hungary is in the midst of a fundamental transformation toward a market economy. Although Hungary has long been in the forefront of efforts to reform socialism itself, after 1989 the goals of reform moved from market socialism toward capitalism, as the old Communist regime lost power and the idea of widespread private ownership gained acceptance. The legal framework – the "rules of the game – is now being geared toward encouraging, protecting, and rewarding entrepreneurs in the private sector.

This Article describes the evolving legal framework in Hungary in several areas: constitutional, real property, intellectual property, company, foreign investment, contract, …

The Effect Of Lilly V. Medtronics On The Scope Of 35 Usc 271(E)(1): The Patent Infringement Exemption - Broad Or Narrow, Ajay S. Pathak

Journal of Law and Health

This article undertakes to examine, critically, the case history, legislative history, and the construction of sections 101, 201, and 202 of the Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 in an effort to analyze the Supreme Court's recent decision in Lilly v. Medtronics and to discern how the scope of section 271(e)(1) is likely to be treated in future cases in light of that recent Supreme Court decision.

Of Harms And Benefits: Torts, Restitution, And Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright and patent take the form of ordinary property. As tangible property has physical edges, intellectual property statutes create boundaries by defining the subject matters within their zone of protection. As real property owners have rights to prevent strangers from entering their land, intellectual property statutes and case law grant owners rights to exclude strangers from using the protected work in specified ways. As tangible property can be bought and sold, bequeathed and inherited, so can copyrights and patents.

Case Comment, John C. Herman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Section 337 of the recently amended Tariff Act of 1930 permits United States patent owners to bar from importation goods that infringe upon their patents. In Amgen, Inc. v. United States International Trade Commission, the Federal Circuit refused to grant relief to the patent owner because it had no claim on either the final product imported or the process to create the product. The alleged infringer, however, had to use the patented product to create the final product, which, if done in the United States, would infringe the patent.

This Comment argues for an extension of section 337 to cover …

The Caribbean Basin Initiative: A Proposal To Attract Corporate Investment And Technological Infusion Via An Inter-American System Of Cooperative Protection For Intellectual Property, John Cyril Malloy Iii

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Trademark And Unfair Competition Law By The United States Trademark Association , Jeffrey E. Jacobson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Legal Protection Of Ideas, Grant Hammond

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The received wisdom is that an idea as such is not legally protected. But now courts are embarking on a course which, at least in some respects, embraces the proposition that ideas will sometimes be protected. This essay suggests that these contemporary developments in the common law world should be regarded with disquiet. Courts are sanctioning the commercial exploitation of ideas in the face of an apparent desire of human beings to reduce every aspect of themselves to divisible, saleable commodities. Short term commercial gain is preferred to the timeless importance of ideas in the seamless web of humanity. This …

Combatting Piracy Of Intellectual Property In International Markets: A Proposed Modification Of The Special 301 Action, Theodore H. Davis

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Increasing losses attributable to the piracy of United States intellectual property rights in international trade have forced domestic policymakers to reexamine how best to protect these rights. This Article examines the United States most recent bilateral strategy to protect intellectual property, the Special 301 action, which creates a virtually mandatory United States Trade Representative (USTR) investigation into states that have inadequate intellectual property laws or that deny fair market access to United States citizens who rely on intellectual property protection. Part One of this Article discusses the historic interaction between United States intellectual property protection and trade measures. Part Two …

Protecting United States Intellectual Property Abroad: Toward A New Multilateralism, Marshall A. Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.