Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

On Copyright Utilitarianism, Patrick R. Goold, David A. Simon

Indiana Law Journal

Utilitarians typically argue that the state should grant copyright to authors only when doing so promotes utility. In recent years, however, this argument has faced three criticisms. As a normative matter, critics argue that a utilitarian copyright system is neither just nor attractive. As an epistemological matter, critics argue that society cannot ever know whether copyright promotes utility. And as an interpretive matter, critics argue that utilitarianism fails to appreciate what copyright is really all about: progress of the sciences and useful arts. And so, an increasing number of scholars conclude that copyright should be awarded, not when doing so …

Patent Term Tailoring, Sarah Rajec

Indiana Law Journal

Patent rights are designed to encourage innovation with both the promise of a patent and with its expiration. Currently, patent term lasts from issuance until twenty years from the application date, with minor exceptions. The patent term is limited so that rewards for past invention do not overly hinder future progress. Although the goal is laudable, a uniform patent term is a blunt instrument to achieve such a nuanced balance. Historically, the patent system was not averse to tailoring terms through, for example, individually granted extensions to undercompensated inventors or term curtailment when a foreign patent holder failed to “work” …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Due Process Shaped By The Present Instead Of The Past: The Needed Reinvigoration Of A Lawrence Vision Of Due Process, Azor Cole

Seattle University Law Review

The recognition of unenumerated rights, rights implied from the text of the constitution, is a political battlefield waged through law with profound implications for all Americans. Generally, there have been two prongs for an inquiry into an unenumerated constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. One is to ask whether the right to be found is objectively deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition. The other is to ask whether the right to be found is fundamental to this Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty. The current Supreme Court has effectively done away with this present-day liberty analysis, saying it is …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

A Framework For Applying Copyright Law To The Training Of Textual Generative Artificial Intelligence, Art Neill, James Thomas, Erika Lee

Faculty Scholarship

The rise in the popularity of consumer-facing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created considerable confusion and consternation among some copyright owners. The ability to automate the generation of original works based on user input is considered by some copyright holders to have been made possible by large-scale direct infringement by OpenAI, Microsoft, and other major GenAI developers. This article explores the application of copyright law to the training of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, specifically focusing on the legal issues surrounding the unauthorized use of copyrighted textual works in the GenAI training process.

The large language models (LLMs) that drive ChatGPT and similar …

Failure To Function: A Potential New Shield Against Trademark Infringement?, Alyssa Yoshino

IP Theory

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has recently been characterized as having a “penchant” for refusing trademark registrations on the grounds of failure to function. This trend has come with commentary, both praising the doctrine’s ability to efficiently supplement the distinctiveness analysis by assessing use and criticizing the inconsistent application of the doctrine. The sources of this academic commentary, from Alexandra J. Roberts and Lucas D. Cuatrecasas, serve as the heads of two camps regarding the failure to function doctrine. The first encourages an increased application of the doctrine as a combined distinctiveness and use analysis. The second …

The Copyright Requirement Of Human Authorship For Works Containing Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content, Runhua Wang

IP Theory

The U.S. Copyright Office (the “Office”) unwaveringly refuses to register copyrights for artworks created by artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems. The prima facie reason is a lack of authorship because the U.S. copyright regime recognizes only humans as authors. However, the fundamental reason lies in the fact that legislators have not yet determined whether to grant copyrights to AI users. Despite adjustments made by the Office in response to the use of AI systems in creation, the agency’s implementation of copyright statutes suggests that it remains extremely conservative, rejecting any AI-generated content (“AIGC”) from copyright registration.

Will the copyright regime continue …

Comparative Intellectual Property & Religion, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

IP Theory

This Article introduces religion to comparative IP scholarship and explains how faith-based considerations can enhance it. Comparative IP scholars have extensively studied different IP laws in different jurisdictions, but they seemed to suggest an erroneous view that comparative IP and religion are like two parallel lines without intersection. Building on these scholars’ work, this Article discusses religion’s role in fostering a new vehicle for discussion and a new normative lens with the aim of ascertaining the existence and extent of religion in legal systems, serving as part of the comparison methodology between legal systems with potential for influencing the policy …

International Arbitration Of Sep Frand Royalties, Steven Pepe, Samuel Brenner, Michael Morales

Touro Law Review

Standard-essential patent royalty disputes have typically been litigated in U.S. federal district courts, but patent owners have recently started to file suit in courts across the globe, leading to issues of comity, anti-suit injunctions, and increased litigation costs. International arbitration provides a unique forum for parties to litigate these royalty disputes and avoid, or at least lessen the burden, of these issues. This Article explores the advantages and disadvantages of using international arbitration to resolve standard-essential patent royalty disputes.

The Author-Ity Of Ai: Navigating The Legal Landscape Of Artificial Intelligence Authorship, John R. Sepúlveda

Touro Law Review

This Article discusses the problems that arise when trying to protect works that involve generative AI. It will detail how authorship currently is interpreted under U.S. law and how the courts and the U.S. Copyright Office interpret the authorship requirement. This Article will also present some practical tips on how to navigate current U.S. law and obtain a copyright registration.

Skinny Labels: Changing Scenario Of Induced Infringement And Public Policy, Sandhu, Amit Dhillon

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention to the inventor. However, when it comes to life-sustaining products, these exclusive rights have a negative impact on people’s lives. The government has tried to develop initiatives, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act, to compensate and speed up the entry of affordable medicines into the market. But when one patent addressing one medical condition (indication) blocks the entry of the generic, the use of skinny labels makes it possible for the generic players to carve out the label and enter the market only with indications that are off-patent. This helps bring …

Open Access And U. S. Federal Information Policy, Eric Harbeson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Federal agencies are directed, as a matter of United States Federal policy, to provide free, immediate public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are produced with support from Federal research grant funding. Because copyright vests in the author of the work, agencies must have permission from the author in order to provide that access. A government-wide regulation, in place since 1976, constitutes one possible source for the needed permission. The “Federal Purpose License” provides that, as a condition of Federal funding, grant recipients issue the granting agency a non-exclusive license to use all works subject to copyright and either developed …

Administration For Community Living (Acl) Response To The Office Of Science And Technology Policy Memo, 2022: Public Access Plan (January 2024)

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

ACL response to OSTP memo, 2022: Public Access Plan (January 2024)

Patent Term Tailoring, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

Patent rights are designed to encourage innovation with both the promise of a patent and with its expiration. Currently, patent term lasts from issuance until twenty years from the application date, with minor exceptions. The patent term is limited so that rewards for past invention do not overly hinder future progress. Although the goal is laudable, a uniform patent term is a blunt instrument to achieve such a nuanced balance. Historically, the patent system was not averse to tailoring terms through, for example, individually granted extensions to undercompensated inventors or term curtailment when a foreign patent holder failed to “work” …

Retrenching Speech Protective Thresholds In Trademark Law, Jake Linford

Scholarly Publications

In their article, Raising the Threshold for Trademark Infringement to Protect Free Expression, Christine Haight Farley and Lisa Ramsey argue in favor of a speech-protective fair use test that would replace multiple tests applied by the U.S. Courts of Appeals when a defendant's alleged infringement has either informational or expressive elements. This Response explains why this raised threshold test is unlikely to be adopted following the U.S. Supreme Court's retrenchment of speech-protective thresholds in Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Productions, LLC. That prediction is bolstered by the Court's likely holding in Vidal v. Elster. Readers persuaded that current defensive …

Deconstructing The Blueprint For Infringement: Remedying Flawed Interpretations Of The § 120(A) Exception To Architecture Copyrights, Margalit Zimand

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

Drafting the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990 (“AWCPA”) consisted of a bizarre hodgepodge of considerations. Ostensibly, the goal of the Act was to bring the United States unquestionably into compliance with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which the United States had just recently joined, with as minimal an impact on U.S. law as possible. In reality, this goal — itself not without built-in tensions — was but one of several competing forces at play in the drafting process. The other forces generally fell into three camps. There were the proponents of preserving …

Fairness And Fair Use In Generative Ai, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Although we are still a long way from the science fiction version of “artificial general intelligence” that thinks, feels, and refuses to “open the pod bay doors,” recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have captured the public’s imagination and lawmakers’ interest. We now have large language models (LLMs) that can pass the bar exam, carry on (what passes for) a conversation about almost any topic, create new music, and create new visual art. These artifacts are often indistinguishable from their human-authored counterparts and yet can be produced at a speed and scale surpassing human ability.

“Generative AI” …

Innovator Ecosystem Diversity As A Global Competitiveness Imperative, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

There are myriad ways that discrimination and bias can combine to profoundly limit inventor participation in the patent process. The utilitarian purpose of patents is to incentivize inventors to invent and disclose, so it makes sense to incentivize as large and as diverse a group as possible in order to maximize the likely output of innovative activity. This incentive is important in terms of our geopolitical aspirations as a country, but hopefully also because of our democratic commitment to provide opportunities for flourishing and reaching one's potential that are available to all.

An Unauthorized Renaissance? An Analysis Of Artists’ Claims For Copyright Infringement Against Ai Generated Art And Possible Defenses, Victoria Young

FIU Law Review

AI currently presents a novel issue in terms of copyright infringement, specifically AI generated art. Recently, a group of artists filed a class action lawsuit against several AI generated art companies. This comment evaluates the potential avenues the court may take. The artists allege these AI generated art companies directly infringed on their copyrighted works by making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works which they used to train their machine learning programs. A determination on whether AI generated art constitutes copyright infringement has not been made by the courts before. To bring a successful copyright infringement claim, a party must show …

Balancing Interests: Ai, Business & Human Rights, And The Legal Landscape In An Era Of Disruption, Jena Martin, Ritu Narula

Faculty Articles

On October 30, 2023, the Biden Administration issued a sweeping executive order espousing a policy to advance the development and use of artificial intelligence ("Al") while also establishing safeguards across the federal government. The Executive Order marked the U.S. government's largest move forward related to the regulation of Al. The Order also represents the government's latest effort to advance equity, privacy, and national security in the use of AI systems. Moreover, the Order comes at a time when governments around the world are wrestling with the impact of AI and its disruptive effect, not just on markets, but on society …

Tools Do Not Create: Human Authorship In The Use Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Artistic tools, from brushes to complex algorithms, don’t create art; human artists do. The advent of generative AI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion has blurred this understanding, causing observers to believe these tools are the authors of the artworks they produce, even so far as to imagine that the artworks are “created” by the AI in the copyright sense of the word. Not so.

The U.S. Copyright Office recently issued guidance on the copyrightability of works produced using generative AI tools. The Office has accepted the narrative that AI tools perform the steps of authorship, conceiving of the …

Deepfakes And Dog Toys: First Amendment Defenses Under The Rogers Test After Jack Daniel’S V. Vip Products, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Given that deepfakes are almost always associated with expression of some kind, any attempt to litigate or regulate deepfakes will require the consideration of the First Amendment. Deepfakes implicate so many areas of law and society that a discussion of the interface of First Amendment free speech rights and deepfakes writ large would require a treatise volume with several chapters. This article is more modest: It will examine the past, present, and future use of the Rogers test in an evaluation of the application of First Amendment protections in trademark infringement cases and in legal actions traditionally associated with the …

Comparing Gdpr Against The United States’ Approach To Data Breach Notification By Examining Texas And California And The Feasibility Of A Universal Standard, Amrit Nagi

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Ai-Ip? Copyright In An Age Of Internet Propaganda With Artificial Intelligence, Sonya Saepoff

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Just For Show: Eliminating Judicial Exceptions To Section 101 Would Render Limits On Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Meaningless, Katie Crocker

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Born Too Late To Patent The Engine, Born Too Early To Patent The Lightsaber, Born Just In Time To Patent Space Inventions, Ryan Horejsi

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Transformative Play: The Legalities Of Modding In The Video Game Industry, Erika Weisdorfer

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.