Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Masthead

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Sea Change: The Rising Tide Of Pro Bono Legal Services For The Creative Community, Victoria Phillips

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Measuring Trademark Dilution By Tarnishment, Suneal Bedi, David Reibstein

Indiana Law Journal

The law of trademark tarnishment—a type of trademark dilution—is in disarray. The

basic definition is deceptively simple. Trademark tarnishment occurs when a junior

mark harms the reputation of a substantially similar existing senior trademark by

associating itself with something perverse or deviant. However, it turns out that

Congress and the courts disagree over the prima facie evidence necessary to prove

its existence. The problem is that federal law and related legal principles are simply

ill-equipped to adequately analyze this unique market-driven doctrine. To make

matters worse, legal scholars cannot even agree on whether trademark tarnishment

can empirically exist in the …

Cultural Ip Vs. Commercial Ip [Notes], J. Janewa Osei-Tutu

Articles

No abstract provided.

When Standards Collide With Intellectual Property: Teaching About Standard Setting Organizations, Technology, And Microsoft V. Motorola, Cynthia L. Dahl

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Automated Copyright Enforcement Online: From Blocking To Monetization Of User-Generated Content, Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Global platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok live on users ‘freely’ sharing content, in exchange for the data generated in the process. Many of these digital market actors nowadays employ automated copyright enforcement tools, allowing those who claim ownership to identify matching content uploaded by users. While most debates on state-sanctioned platform liability and automated private ordering by platforms has focused on the implications of user generated content being blocked, this paper places a spotlight on monetization. Using YouTube’s Content ID as principal example, I show how monetizing user content is by far the norm, and blocking the …

The Machine As Author, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Machines are increasingly good at emulating humans and laying siege to what has been a strictly human outpost: intellectual creativity.

At this juncture, we cannot know with certainty how high machines will reach on the creativity ladder when compared to, or measured against, their human counterparts, but we do know this. They are far enough already to force us to ask a genuinely hard and complex question, one that intellectual property (“IP”) scholars and courts will need to answer soon; namely, whether copyrights should be granted to productions made not by humans but by machines.

This Article’s specific objective is …

A Unified Theory Of Convoy Goods, Michael Risch

Faculty Publications

Patent damages jurisprudence continues to struggle with how to treat the sales of noninfringing goods. When such goods have nothing to do with the patent, the answer is easy -- no damages. But when the goods are sold along with patented goods (so-called convoy goods), then courts and commentators are all over the place. The confusion is even worse because most discussion fails to consider whether and how convoy goods should affect lost profits versus reasonable royalty analysis. This commentary provides a general definition of convoy goods and provides a unified theory about how to treat them in both lost …

Trade Mark Licensing And Covid-19: Why Fashion Companies Have A Duty To Comply With Their Legal Obligations, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

For the past several months, Covid-19 has dominated the intellectual property (IP) debate. Most discussions have focused on the implications of patent protection on access to treatments against the virus and a hopefully soon to be found vaccine. In these remarks, I would like to focus on another Covid-19 crisis making headlines across the world and partially related to IP: millions of workers in the garment industry in developing countries have been fired or furloughed as fashion companies have cancelled orders due to plunging sales since the pandemic’s beginning. Famous Western groups such as Inditex (Zara), C&A, Target, and Marks …

Innovative Approaches To Diversion Data, Sean Flynn, Robin Olsen, Maggie Wolk

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Prosecutors across the country are collecting and using data to make decisions in their offices. At the same time, prosecutors are interested in developing and sustaining prosecutorial diversion approaches. Prosecutors can use data to assist in decision-making regarding diversion case processing choices as well as to make office policy and resource allocation decisions that, in turn, support expanded diversion programs. Data collection can help prosecutors decide if a prosecutorial diversion program will work for them, and if so, what characteristics it should have. Finally, data can help prosecutors see whether they are obtaining their intended outcomes. Prosecutors possess varying levels …

Gene Patents, Drug Prices, And Scientific Research: Unexpected Effects Of Recently Proposed Patent Eligibility Legislation, Charles Duan

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Recently, Congress has considered legislation to amend§ 101, a section of the Patent Act that the Supreme Court has held to prohibit patenting of laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. This draft legislation would expand the realm of patent-eligible subject matter, overturning the Court's precedents along the way. The draft legislation, and movement to change this doctrine of patent law, made substantial headway with a subcommittee of the Senate holding numerous roundtables and hearings on the subject.

This article considers some less-discussed consequences of that draft legislative proposal. The legislation likely opens the door to patenting of subject …

Trips And Its Contents, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In 2006, I published TRIPS and Its Discontents in a symposium commemorating the tenth anniversary of the WTO TRIPS Agreement. At that time, developing countries were deeply discontent with the Agreement and the new and higher intellectual property standards that the WTO had imposed upon them. By contrast, when the TRIPS Agreement was about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in April 2019, the developing countries' trenchant critiques of the Agreement were mostly gone. Also disappearing were their usual accusations of neoimperialism.

What has happened? Have developing countries successfully adjusted, or become sensitized, to the high intellectual property standards in the …

Against Progress: Interventions About Equality In Supreme Court Cases About Copyright Law, Jessica Silbey

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Despite expanding scope and the rise of “more” intellectual property, Against Progress demonstrates that turn-of-the century intellectual property practice challenges the “progress as more” paradigm. Through various methodological interventions – close reading of cases, doctrinal analysis, and various qualitative empirical methods – Against Progress demonstrates how contemporary accounts of intellectual property are not primarily anchored by claims of “more” or in economic growth terms. Instead, creative and innovative practices (and disputes concerning them) revolve around adjacent values and principles central to our constitutional system such as equality, privacy, and community or general welfare.

Two Centuries Of Trademark And Copyright Law: A Citation-Network-Analysis Approach, Joseph Scott Miller

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

The Supreme Court has decided many more patent cases than trademark or copyright cases. This is so not just in the past decade—the focus of the tenth annual Supreme Court IP Review at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, in September 2019—but in the past 20 decades. In gathering the entire body of the Court’s IP caselaw for study with cita-tion-network-analysis tools, I found that patent cases greatly outnum-ber trademark and copyright cases. Moreover, patent cases, especially patent and antitrust cases, dominate the metrics for the most central cases in the citation network.

Aesthetic Functionality At A Crossroads: What A Troublesome Doctrine Can Learn From Its Past, Xiaoren Wang

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

With the rise of branding and marketing, firms started using trade dress such as product features or packages to identify themselves. Some firms claim an exclusive trademark right on their trade dress. However, granting a trademark right to some trade dresses might hinder competition. For example, if one firm claims trademark on the heart-shaped candy box, it will prevent others from using the same package to compete in the Valentine’s Day sweets market. So U.S. courts developed a doctrine called aesthetic functionality to avoid the competition hindrance consequence. Aesthetic functionality refers to the situation where a trade dress has the …

Ai Patents: A Data Driven Approach, Brian S. Haney

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

While artificial intelligence (AI) research brings challenges, the resulting systems are no accident. In fact, academics, researchers, and industry professionals have been developing AI systems since the early 1900s. AI is a field uniquely positioned at the intersection of several scientific disciplines including computer science, applied mathematics, and neuroscience. The AI design process is meticulous, deliberate, and time-consuming – involving intensive mathematical theory, data processing, and computer programming. All the while, AI’s economic value is accelerating. As such, protecting the intellectual property (IP) springing from this work is a keystone for technology firms acting in competitive markets.

Choosing The Consequences Of Tam And Brunetti, Alfred C. Yen

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

In Matal v. Tam and Iancu v. Brunetti, the Supreme Court did something it has never done before – namely apply strict First Amendment scrutiny to trademark law. This is a big deal. Many have argued, to relatively little effect, that intellectual property laws, like trademarks, raise serious free speech problems. It is therefore significant news for the Court to declare portions of the Lanham Act unconstitutional not once, but twice.

Ranking Parallel Petitions Before The Ptab: A Survey, Monica Grewal, Heather Petruzzi, Wenli Gu Phd

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

To understand the trends in recent ranking practice, this article an-alyzes a subset of ranked parallel petitions that received an institution decision before or on February 20, 2020. Using a search filter in Docket Navigator to locate multiple petitions challenging the same pa-tent, the authors identified 39 occurrences of ranked parallel petitions that challenge the same claims of the same patents, as well as 2 occur-rences of ranked parallel petitions that challenge different claims of the same patent.

Unfettered Discretion: A Closer Look At The Board's Discretion To Deny Institution, Joel D. Sayres, Reid E. Dodge

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

To ensure that the doorway to IPRs was not limitless, Congress de-lineated a specific threshold before a trial could be instituted. That threshold is set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 314(a), which provides that IPR may not be instituted unless the petition “shows that there is a reasonable likelihood that the petitioner would prevail with respect to at least 1 of the claims challenged in the petition.” However, the Board has increas-ingly identified circumstances in which it will not institute IPR, even where a petitioner satisfies this statutory threshold. Indeed, the Board has seemingly adopted the view that it has …

Expert Discovery Protections: Comparing District Courts With The Ptab, Blaine M. Hackman, Vi T. Tran, Katherine A. Helm

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Expert witness testimony can be critical in patent litigation in all forums. In Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) proceedings, particularly inter partes review (“IPR”) and post-grant review (“PGR”), expert testimony through declarations and depositions plays a central role in both challenging and defending patents. In district courts, live expert testimony is key to proving infringement and invalidity. Accordingly, the legal protections governing the disclosure of expert testimony in discovery in both forums are carefully proscribed, but with notable distinctions.