Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Drafting A Solution: Impact Of The New Salary System On The First-Year Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, Nicholas A. Deming

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Major League Baseball has evolved over the years. What was once a game played by residents of small towns across the country is now a multibillion dollar industry with international ties and ever-expanding exposure. With this transformation, the needs of the game have changed and its place in the judicial framework is unsettled. Currently, there is a growing discrepancy between small-market and large-market Major League Baseball teams. In part, the first-year amateur draft often fails to steer the most talented players to the worst teams because of financial concerns surrounding signing rookies. Major League Baseball had the opportunity to fix …

Libel Capital No More? Reforming British Defamation Law, Stephen Bates

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

London has long been known as the libel capital of the world. Through substantive law, expansive jurisdiction, and high litigation costs, the British courts strongly favor libel plaintiffs. Aspects of the system have come under increasing criticism from a variety of sources, including academics, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, the British Ministry of Justice, and a committee of the House of Commons. In March 2011, the British government proposed far-reaching reforms. Four months later, however, new revelations emerged about phone-hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. As a consequence, the …

Parody Or Identity Theft: The High-Wire Act Of Digital Doppelgangers In California, Katharine Malone

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Several recent high-profile instances of cyberbullying and online impersonation have prompted state legislatures to take action against this real and growing problem. As part of this trend, California recently enacted Senate Bill 1411, which criminalizes "e-personation." At first glance, this statute looks perfectly reasonable: it is short, filled with good intentions, and merely applies existing harassment, intimidation and fraud laws to the relatively recent medium of the Internet. However, a thorough read reveals vague and overly broad language which could result in chilled political activism and free speech. This note analyzes the statute and attempts to provide some guidance on …

Privacy In Social Media: The Right Of Publicity, S. Michael Kernan

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The increasing ubiquity of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, has led to a growing concern regarding the right of privacy on the internet. The myriad of common law cases on the issue provide website operators (and their advertisers) with little or no clear direction as to what is and is not permitted. At the same time, as websites monetize using an advertising model, that monetization is colliding with privacy rights, specifically, the right of publicity. The right of publicity has been heavily litigated lately, in particular against Facebook as it attempts to monetize its massive user base. This …

Ambush Marketing: Dissecting The Discourse, Brian Lee Pelanda

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This article discusses the problematic discourse in which scholars and corporate complainants such as the International Olympic Committee have discussed the issue of ambush marketing. It argues that those who persistently complain about ambush marketing have wielded the term far too liberally, and thus a great deal of confusion exists between the generally accepted definition of ambush marketing and the reality of the circumstances surrounding the numerous marketing strategies that the term is commonly used to describe. While much of the current literature on the subject concludes that the existing state of the law in the United States is not …

“I Agreed To What?”: A Call For Enforcement Of Clarity In The Presentation Of Privacy Policies, David Thompson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Though the federal government has enacted statutes regulating privacy policies in limited contexts, there is no generally applicable law governing the nature of privacy policies across all industries. In light of the ever-increasing prevalence of user data collection and the widespread failure of companies under the self-regulatory model to make their policies readable, of reasonable length, and placed in a noticeable location, I argue that such a regulation should be promulgated.

This note will address the difficulties of preserving one's privacy in the digital era, discuss common shortcomings of privacy policies, explore the negative consequences of these shortcomings, then analyze …

Dropped Calls: The Extent Of The Free Speech Guarantee To Wireless Communications Service, Candice Shin

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

From former President Hosni Mubarak's final days as ruler of Egypt to the Bay Area Rapid Transit's response to the protests on August 11, 2011, governmental entities have increasingly responded to civil unrest by restricting or shutting down wireless communication networks to thrwart further coordination among civilian agitators. Whether BART itself faces another occasion in which to consider disabling its wireless infrastructure, future protests and threats to public safety in the United States are inevitable. To that end, Congress has considered bills that would grant the President the ability to essentially shut down the Internet, including the Protecting Cyberspace as …

Making Non-Competes Unenforceable, Viva R. Moffat

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The law of employee non-competition agreements is a mess. Differing standards, unpredictability, and uncertainty within and between jurisdictions is the norm. The variability in state law provides a significant incentive on both sides to forum shop when a dispute over a non-compete arises. This forum shopping leads to conflicts of law, and choice of law doctrine does not resolve these disputes in a satisfactory way. Because non-compete law is often a matter of fundamental public policy, the use of escape valves from the operation of conflicts principles means that there is no predictability or certainty in non-compete litigation. The search …

A New Institutional Economics Perspective On Trademarks: Rebuilding Post Conflict Zones In Sierra Leone And Croatia, 11 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 745 (2012), Roya Ghafele, Benjamin Gibert

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

This paper evaluates the role of collective trademarks in enhancing the ability of tourism clusters to stimulate economic growth, local ownership and innovative governance. Illustrating how intellectual property (IP) law can be leveraged to achieve this, we offer a new economic rationale for trademarks in the context of tourism. Two post-conflict case studies of Sierra Leone and Croatia provide a crash test for this approach. By emphasizing the role of law, institutions and infrastructure in stimulating tourism in post-conflict zones, this paper echoes new institutional economics perspectives that highlight the impact of legal structure on development. Despite widespread acknowledgement of …

Fostering Web 2.0 Innovation: The Role Of The Judicial Interpretation Of The Dmca Safe Harbor, Secondary Liability And Fair Use, 12 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 70 (2012), Susanna Monseau

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Web 2.0 has generated a surplus of creativity, encouraging innovation of new technologies and further creative expansion of the internet. Social media platforms have demonstrated a significant growth during this time and have been used to create and disseminate a wealth of information and cultural material. While it is important that copyright owners receive legal protection of the content they create, it is necessary not to simultaneously stifle the creativity of end-users. Copyright owners have more power in bargaining for their rights, and their rights are well established through statutory protections. However, internet innovators and end-users, who may have a …

Three Theories Of Copyright In Ratings, James Grimmelmann

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Are ratings copyrightable? The answer depends on what ratings are. As a history of copyright in ratings shows, some courts treat them as unoriginal facts, some treat them as creative opinions, and some treat them as troubling self-fulfilling prophecies. The push and pull among these three theories explains why ratings are such a difficult boundary case for copyright, both doctrinally and theoretically. The fact-opinion tension creates a perverse incentive for raters: the less useful a rating, the more copyrightable it looks. Self-fulfilling ratings are the most troubling of all: copyright's usual balance between incentives and access becomes indeterminate when ratings …

Trolling For Standards: How Courts And The Administrative State Can Help Deter Patent Holdup And Promote Innovation, Niels J. Melius

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Antitrust law and patent law share the common goal of improving economic welfare by facilitating competition and innovation. But these legal fields conflict when baseless claims of patent infringement disrupt the competitive process. In its eBay decision, the Supreme Court muddied the precedential waters by promulgating a vague doctrine of injunctive relief in patent infringement cases. In the years since, a split has emerged in the district courts on the question of which entities generally qualify for injunctive relief as an additional remedy to damages. This uncertainty has failed to mitigate an antitrust phenomenon known as "patent holdup," whereby an …

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 …

Made In America: Is The Idpppa The Answer To The United States Fashion Industry's Quest For Design Protection?, Courtney Daniels

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Google Police: How The Indictment Of The Pirate Bay Presents A New Solution To Internet Piracy, Bernard A. Mantel

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Twenty-First Century Trademarks: How Quirky Quick Response Codes (Quircs) Will Challenge The Lanham Act And The Uspto, Matthew C. Kulseth

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Copyright's Creative Hierarchy In The Performing Arts, Michael W. Carroll

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Copyright law grants authors certain rights of creative control over their works. This Article argues that these rights of creative control are too strong when applied to the performing arts because they fail to take account of the mutual dependence between writers and performers to fully realize the work in performance. This failure is particularly problematic in cases in which the author of a source work, such as a play or a choreographic work, imposes content-based restrictions on how a third party may render the work in performance. This Article then explores how Congress might craft a statutory license to …

Who Owns An Avatar? Copyright, Creativity, And Virtual Worlds, Tyler T. Ochoa

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Today's massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) offer their users the ability to create or customize their own avatars with distinctive visual appearances. This Article contends that users who take advantage of that ability are exercising significant creative choices, such that they should be considered the "authors" and copyright owners of their own avatars. The Copyright Act envisions several types of collaborative authorship, including joint authorship, works made for hire, and collective works. None of these models provides a good fit for user-created avatars, because avatars meet some, but not all, of the elements for each model. Here, the two …

Searching Secrets, Nita A. Farahany

Faculty Scholarship

A Fourth Amendment violation has traditionally involved a physical intrusion such as the search of a house or the seizure of a person or her papers. Today, investigators rarely need to break down doors, rummage through drawers, or invade one’s peace and repose to obtain incriminating evidence in an investigation. Instead, the government may unobtrusively intercept information from electronic files, GPS transmissions, and intangible communications. In the near future, it may even be possible to intercept information directly from suspects’ brains. Courts and scholars have analogized modern searches for information to searches of tangible property like containers and have treated …

Patent Law's Audience, Mark D. Janis, Timothy R. Holbrook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Many rules of patent law rest on a false premise about their target audience. Rules of patentability purport to provide subtle incentives to innovators. However, innovators typically encounter these rules only indirectly, through intermediaries such as lawyers, venture capitalists, managers, and others. Rules of patent scope strive to provide notice of the boundaries of the patent right to anyone whose activities might approach those boundaries, including, in theory, any member of the general public. But the rules of patent scope are practically incomprehensible to the general public. In this Article, we argue that rules of patent law should be designed …