Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Bad News Birkins: Counterfeit In Luxury Brands, 14 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 249 (2015), Colleen Jordan Orscheln

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

The luxury fashion industry spends millions of dollars each year fighting counterfeits, yet a fake Louis Vuitton bag is easily purchased on street corners around the world. Proponents of the counterfeits argue that the fakes translate to advertising for the brands, while the luxury brands argue that it damages the future of their brand. The counterfeit market has been linked to child labor, human trafficking, organized crime, and some terrorist groups. The current federal civil and criminal statutes exclude purchasers from prosecution and instead focus on the distributors of the goods. This comment proposes the strengthening of these laws by …

2014 Trademark Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Jonathan M. Gelchinsky

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Tightening Of Patent Definiteness & The Impact Of Nautilus V. Biosig On The Software Patent Industry, Maliha Khan

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of Reasonable Royalty Damages: The Limited, Proper Role Of The So-Called “Analytical Method”, 49 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1 (2015), Mark Glick, David Mangum

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professional Video Gaming: Piracy That Pays, 49 J. Marshall L. Rev. 217 (2015), Elizabeth Brusa

UIC Law Review

This Comment will focus on the legal implications of end user gamers who profit from the infringing use of copyrighted video gameplay content.

Troubleshooting Legal Malfunction: Lexmark And Consumer Standing Under The Lanham Act, 48 J. Marshall L. Rev. 453 (2015), Jeremy Rovinsky

UIC Law Review

This article suggests that the recent Lexmark decision, while resolving the confusion relating to Lanham Act standing requirements, does nothing to protect those most vulnerable—the consumers. Congress must explicitly declare that consumers have standing under the Lanham Act when they have been damaged by purchasing falsely represented goods or services. Section I provides a history of the Lanham Act and illustrates how different courts initially allowed and then precluded consumers from bringing claims under Section 43(a)’s “any person” language. Section II critiques the opinions that have found no consumer standing, including the Supreme Court’s recent Lexmark decision. Section III highlights …

The Insufficiency Of The Musical Instrument Passport Program Under Cites And The Lacey Act: The Need For A Centralized Wood Title Certification System For Manufactured Wood Products And Wooden Musical Instruments, 48 J. Marshall L. Rev. 495 (2015), Joseph Furlett

UIC Law Review

This comment begins with overviews of the Lacey Act, the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The purpose of this background information is to provide context for the recent creation of a “passport” system for musical instruments to protect them from confiscation based on violations of CITES and the Lacey Act. This comment will then analyze the inherent flaws in the current passport system and describe the difficulties facing corporations and individual consumers as they try to navigate current laws that affect musical instruments. This …

Supreme People's Court Annual Report On Intellectual Property Cases (2013) (China), Tong Li, Xiaohan Lou, Zhenan Wang, Qiuwen Xu

Washington International Law Journal

The Supreme People’s Court of China began publishing its Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases in 2008. The annual reports, published in April of each year, summarize and review new intellectual property cases. This translation includes all 30 cases and 39 legal issues of the 2013 Annual Report. It addresses patent law, trademark law, copyright law, unfair competition, contractual intellectual property rights, liability of intellectual property infringement, and intellectual property litigation procedure and evidence. While China is not a common law country, these cases and guidelines provide lower courts with meaningful insight and direction.

Supreme People's Court Annual Report On Intellectual Property Cases (2013) (China), Tong Li, Xiaohan Lou, Zhenan Wang, Qiuwen Xu

Washington International Law Journal

The Supreme People’s Court of China began publishing its Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases in 2008. The annual reports, published in April of each year, summarize and review new intellectual property cases. This translation includes all 30 cases and 39 legal issues of the 2013 Annual Report. It addresses patent law, trademark law, copyright law, unfair competition, contractual intellectual property rights, liability of intellectual property infringement, and intellectual property litigation procedure and evidence. While China is not a common law country, these cases and guidelines provide lower courts with meaningful insight and direction.

You Can Use Hidden Recorders In Florida, Thomas R. Julin, Jamie Z. Isani, Paulo R. Lima

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The Florida Supreme Court faces a difficult decision in McDade v. State. The court must decide whether the statements recorded on a hidden recording device can be used to convict a man accused of sexually assaulting his step-daughter. This article traces the controversial history of Florida's Security of Communications Act and shows that it does not in ban the use of secret recordings of face-to-face conversations by any part to the conversations. The Florida courts, however, have misread the law for decades and this article urges the Florida Supreme Court to set the record straight in McDade. This article argues …

Talent Managers Acting As Agentsrevisited: An Argument For California's Imperfect Talent Agencies Act, Myles L. Gutenkunst

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Talent managers in California have traditionally faced severe penalties under the Talent Agencies Act (TAA) for simple acts of procuring employment for their artist-clients. Commentators, interest groups, and justices have pointed out these flaws and proposed alternative remedies to provide managers with some equity when violating the statute. These advocates have argued for an adoption of the incidental booking exception that is present in New York's employment agency statutes. However, this proposal and other proposed alternatives actually undercut the policy that the Talent Agencies Act seeks to protect. This note will compare California's TAA and New York's employment agency laws, …

Digital Music Garage Sale: An Analysis Of Capitol Records, Llc V. Redigi Inc. And A Proposal For Legislative Reform In Copyright Enabling A Secondary Market For Digital Music, Nicholas Costanza

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

In 2011, ReDigi, Inc., a Massachusetts-based tech company, created the first resale marketplace for lawfully purchased digital music. This "digital resale" platform immediately drew the attention of copyright holders in the music industry. In early 2012, Capitol Records, LLC sued ReDigi, claiming that the service violated Capitol's exclusive rights to reproduction and distribution of their copyrighted words under the Copyright Act of 1976. Ultimately, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held in favor of Capitol. This note explains this case and discusses the complex relationships between "secondary digital market" technology and current copyright law. …

Proxy.Gov: A Proposal To Modernize Shareholder Lists And Simplify Shareholder Communications, Kevin Kearney

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The SEC is conducting a comprehensive reevaluation of the U.S. corporate proxy system. One issue under the SEC's microscope is public companies' inability to communicate directly with shareholders. When stock trading migrated to the depository system, securities intermediaries undertook the book-entry settlement function. As a result, a public company issuer today cannot identify who holds the right to vote its shares without going through intermediary proxy service providers. Public companies thus communicate with shareholders through a proxy system that is indirect, inefficient, and expensive. Commentators, including issuers, believe that recent developments in the corporate governance landscape require a system that …

Conflict In The Network Of Networks: How Internet Service Providers Have Shifted From Partners To Adversaries, Rob Frieden

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper will examine new models for the carriage of Internet traffic with an eye toward providing insights on how the interconnection process has changed and what positive and negative consequences have resulted. Internet carrier interconnection used to constitute a cooperative undertaking, but now it increasingly requires difficult and protracted negotiations between ventures that consider themselves adversaries in a winner take all transaction. The paper concludes that new commercial arrangements, such as paid peering, can achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. However, the paper also identifies instances where migration from traditional interconnection arrangements has the potential to reduce overall utility of the …

“Fair Compensation” In The Digital Age: Realigning The Audio Home Recording Act, Monica Zhang

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This note examines how the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 falls short of providing “fair compensation” due to copyright owners in the digital age under the Copyright Act. The note focuses on the narrow language of the statute and the impact on royalties generated, as well as the shifts in global music consumption that reveal a pressing need for expansion. By examining how Canada and Finland have enacted similar statutes with forward-looking royalty structures, this note suggests better alternatives to our current model by expanding the royalty-bearing pool to truly provide “fair compensation” to recording artists and record labels …

Association For Molecular Pathology V. Myriad Genetics, Inc.: Progress By Principles, Emily J. Bolyard

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

In Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Supreme Court considered whether human genes are patentable under the Patent Act of 1952. Originally enacted in 1790, the Act allows patents to be granted on any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, barring a judicially created exception for laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. These three naturally occurring things are nonpatentable because they create the foundation of scientific and technological work. In Myriad, the Court unanimously held that isolated DNA is nonpatentable, since such DNA is naturally occurring phenomena under the …

Study On Copyright Limitations And Exceptions For Museums, Lucie Guibault, Jean-François Canat, Elizabeth Logeais

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This study investigates the issue of limitations and exceptions to copyright for the benefit of museums, with a view to strengthening the international understanding of the need to have adequate limitations, exploring existing and proposed models of protection, and moving towards agreement regarding specific exceptions or limitations.

Linking Patent Reform And Civil Litigation Reform, Greg Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

Patent reform increasingly focuses on discovery. Discovery is perceived as disproportionately expensive and burdensome in patent cases. Excessive discovery is said to fuel so-called “patent trolls” and impose an unhealthy tax on innovation and competition. These supposedly exceptional problems have led to exceptional patent-only reform proposals, such as delaying most discovery for over a year and reversing the seventy-five-year-old allocation of discovery costs.

Treating patent litigation as exceptional has a siloing effect. Patent reform debates ignore parallel debates over general civil litigation reform that raise the same arguments about disproportionately expensive and burdensome discovery and propose their own set of …

Promoting Contract Flexibility Through Trademarks: "Branded" Intellectual Property Licensing Practices, Nari Lee, Thomas D. Barton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fair Use And Appropriation Art, Niels Schaumann

Faculty Scholarship

Part I provides some background regarding aesthetic vocabulary in the arts, and traces the use of appropriated images in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Part II discusses the general application of copyright law to appropriation art. Part III examines the current status of the fair use cases that address appropriation art and concludes that the fair use results are better than before, largely because of the ascendancy of “transformativeness” as an important fair use factor. It also concludes, however, that fair use remains insufficient to protect appropriation art. Finally, Part IV re-proposes a solution—an exception to copyright, limited to fine …