Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Let's Talk About Text: Contracts, Claims, And Judicial Philosophy At The Federal Circuit, Andrew T. Langford

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Newman, J., Dissenting: Another Vision Of The Federal Circuit, Blake R. Hartz

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing, The Remix: Plagiarism And Hip Hop Ethics, 63 Mercer L. Rev. 597 (2012), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop. As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.

Significant parallels exist between the cultures of United States legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. Chief among …

The Why In Diy Book Scanning, Daniel Reetz

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

D Is For Digitize: An Introduction, James Grimmelmann

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Research In Google Book Search, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

Many researchers—even trained professionals—often use the Google search engine to begin searches for information. Google’s many products enable researchers to search public websites, scholarly articles, and even patents. One vast area of information not yet thoroughly indexed by Google is print books. Google Book Search (also at times referred to as Google Books, Google Print and Google Library Project) is the company’s effort to digitize and index the world’s print literature.

The Future Of Books Related To The Law?, Eugene Volokh

Michigan Law Review

People have been reading books for over 500 years, in more or less the same format. Book technology has changed in some measure during that time. Fonts have become more readable. Books have become more affordable. Still, the general form of the book has remained much the same. But the arrival of e-readers, such as the Kindle and the Sony eBook, offers the possibility of a major change. First, people may shift to reading existing books on those e-readers. Second, the shift may lead them to change the way they use books, for instance by letting people have many reference …

Briefing Cases: Session On Copyright Law, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

This handout contains the decision from Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751 (1978), suggested elements for how to brief a case in general, and an example brief for the Air Pirates case.

Safeguarding "The Precious": Counsel On Law Journal Publication Agreements In Digital Times, 28 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 217 (2010), Michael N. Widener

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Heaping scholarship fills the academic print and online press about where legal scholars should publish and how to have one’s paper accepted for publication. But there is scarce writing about the contractual relationship between the law journal and the author of an accepted paper. This may be due in part to broadly misconstrued or ignored publication agrees, or perhaps that the business relationship is unworthy of scholarly attention. Regardless, this paper introduces a pragmatist’s perspective on evaluating and revising publication agreements, and informs student editors how publication agreements accomplish a journal’s objectives, based on current copyright law. Finally, this paper …

The New Ontologies: The Effect Of Copyright Protection On Public Scientific Data Sharing Using Semantic Web Ontologies, 10 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 181 (2010), Andrew Clearwater

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

The semantic web is going to become an important tool for scientists who need to accurately share data given context through structured relationships. The structure that defines contextual relationships on the semantic web is known as an ontology; which is a hierarchical organization of a knowledge domain that contains entities and their relations. This paper seeks to answer whether semantic web ontologies are protectable by copyright, and regardless of the outcome, what the best practices are for the scientific community. The best practices for the scientific community should include the adoption of a machine readable ontology license which disclaims copyright …

The Politics Of Intellectual Property, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

In May 2005, Keith Aoki invited me to participate on a panel on "The Politics of Copyright Law" at the 2006 Association of American Law Schools ("A.A.L.S. ") mid-year meeting workshop on Intellectual Property in Vancouver, British Columbia. The panel, renamed "The Politics of Intellectual Property," and moderated by Keith, included talks by Justin Hughes, Mark Lemley, Jay Thomas, and me, and it was followed by three concurrent sessions on "The Politics Concerning Moral Rights," "The Politics of Global Intellectual Property, " and "The Politics of Patent Reform." I'm not sure what the organizing committee had in mind when it …

Fixing A Hole: Eliminating Ownership Uncertainties To Facilitate University-Generated Innovation, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

This Article examines whether U.S. district court judges improve their skills at patent claim construction with experience, including the experience of having their own cases reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In theory, higher courts teach doctrine to lower courts via judicial decisions, and lower courts learn from these decisions. This Article tests the teaching-and-learning premise on the issue of claim construction in the realities of patent litigation. While others have shown that the Federal Circuit reverses a large percentage of lower court claim constructions, no one has analyzed whether judges with more claim construction appeal …

Writer's Block, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

New Research Uses For Patent And Trademark Data, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, I examine alternative uses for information found in patent and trademark filing databases, suggesting ways to locate a law firm's clients, perform competitive intelligence, and locate or investigate expert witnesses. Finally, I talk about an interesting non-law use of patent data, i.e., historical research.

Should Patent Infringement Require Proof Of Copying?, Mark A. Lemley

Michigan Law Review

Patent infringement is a strict liability offense. Patent law gives patent owners not just the right to prevent others from copying their ideas, but the power to control the use of their idea--even by those who independently develop a technology with no knowledge of the patent or the patentee. This is a power that exists nowhere else in intellectual property (IP) or real property law, but it is a one that patentees have had, with rare exceptions, since the inception of the Republic. In an important paper in the Michigan Law Review, Samson Vermont seeks to change this, arguing …

The Angel Is In The Big Picture: A Response To Lemley, Samson Vermont

Michigan Law Review

An invention within close reach of multiple inventors differs from an invention within distant reach of a lone inventor. The differences between these two archetypes of invention -"reinventables" and "singletons"- remain unexploited under current U.S. law. Should we reform the law to exploit the differences? Mark Lemley and I agree that we should. To date, those economists who have closely examined the issue concur. What are the differences between reinventables and singletons? First, reinventables can be brought into existence with incentives of lower magnitude. This suggests that we can obtain reinventables at a lower price than we currently pay-i.e., with …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Trademark Searching Tools And Strategies: Questions For The New Millennium, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

The intent of this discussion is to raise questions about trademark searching which will be discussed in future issues of IDEA. I will lead you through the questions raised by my journey through primarily legal literature in treatises and periodicals on the Lexis and Westlaw platforms.

Keeping Up To Date With Ip News Services And Blogs: Drowning In A Sea Of Sameness?, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

It seems like so many IP related Websites you visit invite you to join their free email list to keep you up to date. Sources span a wide spectrum including governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, consulting services, law firms, commercial publishers and more. These sources span the spectrum from free, to low fee to premium pricing. With all of this information overload and choices, how do you differentiate and choose news sources?

The goals of this article are twofold. Goal one is to present a survey of types and categories of IP news tools available to IP researchers. Since …

Copyright And Trademark Legal Research, Terrance K. Manion, Colleen C. Williams

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of Open Access Law Publishing, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

The conventional model of scholarly publishing uses the copyright system as a lever to induce commercial publishers and printers to disseminate the results of scholarly research. Recently, we have seen a number of high-profile experiments seeking to use one of a variety of forms of open access scholarly publishing to develop an alternative model. Critics have not quarreled with the goals of open access publishing; instead, they've attacked the viability of the open access business model. If we are examining the economics of open access publishing, we shouldn't limit ourselves to the question whether open access journals have fielded a …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Duties And Obligations Of The International Legal Community To The Eradication Of Poverty And Growth Of Sustainable Development In Light Of The Jus Cogens Nature Of The Declaration Of The Right To Development, Freda R. Murray-Bruce

ExpressO

This paper examines the copious problem of world poverty affecting half of the world’s population in the South and assesses the international legal obligations of the international legal community, viz., developed states, transnational corporations and the international financial institutions of the IMF, World Bank and WTO to the eradication of poverty and the growth of sustainable development, in view of the inviolability and peremptory nature of the Charter of the UN, and the international human rights provisions arising therefrom. To this extent, we examine the 1986 General Assembly Declaration on the Right to Development, along with the other International Bill …

Law Student Plagiarism: Why It Happens, Where It's Found, And How To Find It, Kristin Gerdy

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

The author explores why law students plagiarize and how to detect it using both personal and technological methods.

For Of All Sad Words Of Tongue Or Pen, The Saddest Are “It Might Have Been”—Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity, Katherine Kelly

William Mitchell Law Review

Review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. By Lawrence Lessig. Penguin Press, 2004. 348 pages, $24.95

A Guide To U.S. Intellectual Property Searching Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

The disadvantage to searching intellectual property online, patents in particular, is that the available online databases do not encompass the array and extent of tools needed to conduct a comprehensive search.7 Essentially, you can search patents on the web, but you cannot do a true patent search. A complete patentability search must include not only U.S. patents, but foreign patents and all relevant non-patent literature also (all resources together are referred to as ‘‘prior art’’ for an invention).8 These additional resources can be researched at the Patent Office Library in Washington D.C., and, on a more limited basis, at a …

I Didn't Take The Road Less Traveled, And What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, Brian A. Glassman

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

How Dewey Classify Oclc's Lawsuit, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In order to understand the nature of the rights asserted here, it is important to properly classify the Dewey Decimal lawsuit. To these ends, this article presents analysis aimed to better define its scope and legal framework. This is not an analysis of the merits of the claims, let alone a prediction as to the outcome. The issues are considered in the following three sections. In closing, I offer a lighthearted suggestion as to how this suit might be resolved outside of litigation or settlement.