Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

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UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Digital Wild West: Foreign Social Media Bans, Data Privacy, And Free Speech, Tiange (Tim) Chen

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Sy-Stem-Ic Bias: An Exploration Of Gender And Race Representation On University Patents, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

People of color and women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (“STEM”) fields in the United States. Through both intentional and unintentional structural barriers, universities continue to lose valuable intellectual resources by perpetuating a lack of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity as people climb the academic ladder. Identifying racial and gender disparities between university campus populations and their patent representation quantifies the qualitatively observed systemic racism and sexism plaguing STEM. Although many have written about racial and gender underrepresentation in STEM, no author has ever endeavored to simultaneously quantify the racial and gender gap at universities in the …

The Fiction Of Nfts And Copyright Infringement, Emily T. Behzadi

Faculty Scholarship

In the first quarter of 2021, the sales of art in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”) reached over $200 billion dollars. The arrival of NFTs in the mainstream art market has profoundly shaped the way artists exploit their works. This sensational boom has attracted some of the world's biggest names across pop culture and sports, including celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Post Malone, Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, to create their own NFT art. Director Quentin Tarantino has also capitalized on this craze through the creation of an NFT collection based on the film Pulp Fiction. However, …

Is The Chemical Genus Claim Really “Dead” At The Federal Circuit?: Part Ii, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

A 2020 law review article entitled The Death of the Genus Claim (“Death”) purports to document a dramatic shift in the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of 35 U.S.C. 112(a)’s enablement and written description requirements, particularly as applied to chemical genus claims. According to the authors of Death, it has become nearly impossible to obtain a chemical genus claim that will be upheld as valid in the face of a challenge for overbreadth under Section 112(a). Death was cited extensively in Amgens’s successful petition for certiorari in Amgen v. Sanofi, a case asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s decision …

The Jurisprudence Of Public Concern In Anti-Slapp Law: Shifting Boundaries In State Statutory Protection Of Free Expression, Matthew D. Bunker, Emily Erickson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

From Utilitarianism To Fordism: How Americans Brought The Panopticon Home, Katherine Hoppe

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many not considered essential employees into their homes. Many employers worried about employee accountability, leveraged surveillance techniques to maximize employee performance and ensure productivity. These technologies include screen monitoring software, video recordings of employees within their homes, monitoring of social media, and typing efficiency. While employees continue to work outside of the office, private employers will increasingly monitor employees in spaces traditionally considered private—including the home. As private and public life spheres continue to overlap, privacy for workers may erode. What kinds of surveillance have employees experienced in their homes since the Covid-19 lockdown orders? Moreover, …

Cut! . . . Out Of Credit Arbitration The Case For Giving Hollywood Directors A Formalized Dispute Resolution Procedure For Conflicts Of Attribution, Madeline Giles

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

The Long And Winding Road To Effective Copyright Protection In China, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2020, China adopted the Third Amendment to the Copyright Law, providing a major overhaul of its copyright regime. This Amendment entered into effect on June 1, 2021. The last time the regime was completely revamped was in October 2001, when the Copyright Law was amended two months before China joined the World Trade Organization. While U.S. policymakers and industry groups have had mixed reactions to the recent Amendment, the new law presents an opportunity to take stock of the progress China has made in the copyright reform process. This Article begins by mapping the long and winding road …

The U.S.-China Forced Technology Transfer Dispute, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

The past few years have seen not only a trade war between China and the United States involving tariffs on close to $750 billion worth of goods, but also multiple complaints filed by both countries before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. A key driver behind these ongoing tensions and conflicts concerns the challenges confronting U.S. technology companies—both online and offline. Although the inadequate protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China has been the subject of a perennial debate since the mid-1980s, the recent concerns have raised new issues that have been lumped together under the umbrella of "forced …

Transplanting Anti-Suit Injunctions, Peter K. Yu, Jorge L. Contreras, Yu Yang

Faculty Scholarship

When adjudicating high-value cases involving the licensing of patents covering industry standards such as Wi-Fi and 5G (standards-essential patents or SEPs), courts around the world have increasingly issued injunctions preventing one party from pursuing parallel litigation in another jurisdiction (anti-suit injunctions or ASIs). In response, courts in other jurisdictions have begun to issue anti-anti-suit injunctions, or even anti-anti-anti suit injunctions, to prevent parties from hindering the proceedings in those courts. Most of these activities have been limited to the United States and Europe, but in 2020 China emerged as a powerful new source of ASIs in global SEP litigation. The …

States Can Infringe Upon Your Intellectual Property Rights With Impunity In The Era Of "New Federalism", Homayoon Rafatijo, Dennis D. Crouch

Faculty Publications

Antagonized by half a century of insouciance toward federalism boundaries, the "New Federalism" revival began under Chief Justice Rehnquist. As part of this revival, the Rehnquist Court substantially restrained Congress's authority to regulate commerce, abrogate sovereign immunity, fashion remedies pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and "commandeer" state officials. The New Federalism has continued in the Roberts Court Era, most recently in a case weighing congressionally enacted copyright policy against the sovereignty of individual states to disregard copyright. In Allen v. Cooper, a unanimous Supreme Court held that Congress's express power under Article I is not a …

The Law Of Employee Data: Privacy, Property, Governance, Matthew T. Bodie

Indiana Law Journal

The availability of data related to the employment relationship has ballooned into an unruly mass of performance metrics, personal characteristics, biometric recordings, and creative output. The law governing this collection of information has been awkwardly split between privacy regulations and intellectual property rights, with employees generally losing on both ends. This Article rejects a binary approach that either carves out private spaces ineffectually or renders data into isolated pieces of ownership. Instead, the law should implement a hybrid system that provides workers with continuing input and control without blocking efforts at joint production. In addition, employers should have fiduciary responsibilities …

The Ping-Pong Olympics Of Antisuit Injunction In Frand Litigation, King Fung Tsang, Jyh-An Lee

Michigan Technology Law Review

In the past two years, antisuit injunctions (ASIs) and subsequent legal proceedings associated with standard-essential patents (SEPs) subject to fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) commitments have proliferated in multiple jurisdictions. This phenomenon reveals not only the transnational nature of technical standards and FRAND-encumbered SEPs but also the jurisdictional tension between different national courts. This Article explains the emergence of ASIs in FRAND scenarios and recent developments in six jurisdictions with major interests in standard development and adoption. Countries have developed different approaches to ASIs based on their own domestic rules and interests. We believe that to promote technical compatibility and …

Right Of Self, Mitchell F. Crusto

Washington and Lee Law Review

The exercise of free will against tyranny is the single principle that defines the American spirit, our history, and our culture. From the American Revolution through the Civil War, the two World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and up to today, Americans have embraced the fundamental rights of the individual against wrongful governmental intrusion. This is reflected in our foundational principles, including the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, the Reconstruction Amendments, the Nineteenth Amendment, and, more recently, in the Supreme Court’s recognition of fundamental individual rights within the Constitution’s penumbras. However, there is no …

Endorsing After Death, Andrew Gilden

William & Mary Law Review

An endorsement is an act of giving one’s public support to a person, product, service, or cause; accordingly, it might seem impossible for someone to make an endorsement after they have died. Nevertheless, posthumous endorsements have become commonplace in social media marketing and have been increasingly embraced by trademark and unfair competition laws. Entities representing Marilyn Monroe, for example, have successfully brought trademark claims for the unauthorized use of Monroe’s name, have successfully brought false endorsement claims under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, and regularly have promoted products through the Instagram-verified “@marilynmonroe” page. Marilyn Monroe survives today as a …

Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-Informed Agenda For Reparative And Inclusive Descriptive Practice, Rachel L. Frick, Merrilee Proffitt

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Executive Summary

The Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project convened a group of experts, practitioners, and community members to determine ways of improving descriptive practices, tools, infrastructure, and workflows in libraries and archives. The result, this community agenda, is offered to the broad library and archives community of practice. The agenda draws together insights from the convening, related research, and operational work that is ongoing in the field. All institutions hold power to make meaningful changes in this space, and all share collective responsibility.

The agenda is not a “how-to guide,” but it is constructed to instruct and chart a path toward …

Paths To Downstream Innovation, Janet Freilich

Faculty Scholarship

All innovation is "downstream innovation" - research that builds on prior discoveries. Patent law has an outsized influence on downstream innovation because such innovation often falls within the scope of an in-force upstream patent. In these cases, innovators cannot conduct even the most basic research towards downstream technologies without addressing the upstream patent. Because upstream patents block downstream research, and it is often impractical to license the upstream patent, downstream researchers frequently exploit a group of doctrines that permit research to proceed even in the presence of an otherwise blocking patent.

This Article presents the first systematic review of the …

The Way Lawyers Worked, Michael Risch, Mike Viney

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Court and litigation operations are opaque in the best of times, and the lack of explanatory Nineteenth Century legal records makes it even more difficult to learn how lawyers and judges went about their business. This may be one of the reasons there are so few accounts detailing the nuts and bolts of 1800s law practice. This Article illuminates the development of litigation and the law in the middle of the Nineteenth Century by examining archival court and Patent Office records.

Most accounts of the time focus either on judicial opinions or the relationship of the parties, but few articles …

Hip Hop And The Law : Presented By Intellectual Property Law Association 03/31/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.