Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

The Perils Of Trademark Co-Ownership And The Need For Co-Ownership Agreements, Cameron Quilling

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Māori Defend Digital Sovereignty Over Big Tech’S Free Trade Rules, Jane Kelsey

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

In 2016, Indigenous Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand challenged the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (‘TPPA’) for breaching the colonial government (Crown) obligations to them under the 1840 Tiriti o Waitangi. This was lodged before a Tribunal particularly established to inquire into such breaches. In 2021, the Tribunal upheld that claim, finding that the TPPA e-commerce provisions failed to protect Māori identity and Indigenous knowledge. Since then, the Crown and Māori have sought means to reconcile these competing paradigms within the unequal power relations of a colonial government and Indigenous Peoples – denied the sovereignty affirmed to them in 1840. This case …

The Role Of Ai In Judicial Translation: Ensuring Access To Justice In Vernacular Languages, With Special Reference To Marathi, Bhushan Raut

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper examines the role of artificial intelligence in judicial translation to enhance access to justice in India’s multilingual legal system, with a specific focus on Marathi. It situates judicial translation within the constitutional framework and Rule of Law theory, arguing that linguistic accessibility is essential to legal agency and fairness. Through doctrinal, empirical, and comparative analysis, the paper evaluates initiatives such as SUVAS, highlights gaps in vernacular availability of landmark judgements, and identifies challenges relating to accuracy, accountability, and legal semantics. It proposes a hybrid AI–human model and policy reforms to ensure reliable, scalable, and inclusive translation practices in …

The Illusory Normativity Of Rights-Based Ai Regulation, Yiyang Mei, Matthew Sag

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

Whether and how to regulate AI is now a central question of governance. Across academic, policy, and international legal circles, the European Union is widely treated as the normative leader in this space. Its regulatory framework, anchored in the General Data Protection Regulation, the Digital Services and Markets Acts, and the AI Act, is often portrayed as a principled model grounded in fundamental rights. This Article challenges that assumption. We argue that the rights-based narrative surrounding EU AI regulation mischaracterises the logic of its institutional design. While rights language pervades EU legal instruments, its function is managerial, not foundational. These …

Public Means Public: A Call For Amendment Of The Copyright Act Of 1976'S Public Display Right To Immunize Private Businesses From Unintentional Infringement, Lucy Greaney

Et Cetera

Private businesses increasingly face copyright liability and burdensome licensing fees under the Public Display Provision of the Copyright Act of 1976, despite engaging in activities that cannot be truly considered public. This Note examines the historical development of the Public Display Provision, analyzes case law involving public accommodations and semi-private entities, and explores the intersection between copyright enforcement and U.S. antitrust principles. It argues that Congress did not intend for private, employee-only business settings to fall within the scope of the Public Display Provision and that the current enforcement regime enables anticompetitive licensing practices by performing rights organizations. To resolve …

When Is Style Substance?, Jordi Fernadez Servitje

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (AELJ) Blog

While we are all aware of our ability to judge a book by its cover, our critical eye extends beyond the face of the book and to the font it is printed in as well. Strictly speaking, font refers to the size, weight, and style of a particular letter, while typeface refers to the overall style and design of the script. The term font comes from the days of physical printing; the font was the metal stamp used for each particular letter. Physical fonts have become antiquated by the advent of digital printing, but in common vernacular, font has remained …

Trademark’S Parody Problem, Christine Haight Farley

Research Reports & White Papers

This Article challenges the Supreme Court's recent assurance that trademark parody is adequately protected under ordinary infringement doctrine without the need for special speech safeguards. In Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, the Court curtailed the principal First Amendment defense for expressive trademark uses while predicting that parodies would nonetheless prevail under the likelihood of confusion test. This Article shows why that prediction is mistaken. Drawing on recent case law and trademark doctrine, it identifies four structural vulnerabilities that now confront parody: the expansion of "trademark use" as a gatekeeping device that excludes parodists from speech-protective …

The Impact Of State And Federal Policies On Academic Researchers: Findings From A National Survey, Dylan Ruediger, Chelsea Mccracken, Jonathan Barefield

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Key findings

● State and federal policies targeting divisive concepts or DEI are shaping research agendas at scale and across disciplines. Twenty percent of all respondents, and 29 percent of researchers working in states with divisive concepts or similar laws, reported having avoided certain research topics because of state laws and policies.

● Eight percent of respondents representing a wide range of disciplines reported having had a federal grant cancelled in 2025.

● Eleven percent of respondents reported that federal and state policies restricting research activities are compelling them to seek employment out of state, to leave the academy, or …

Perverse Tax Incentives And The Destruction Of Creative Works, Luke Maher

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Unexplored Future Of State Copyrights And Patents In Ai-Generated Creations, Timothy J. Mcfarlin

Texas A&M Law Review

This is the first article to broadly explore the possibility of state copyrights and patents in AI-generated creations and what it could portend for the future of intellectual property law.

The U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress, via Article I, the power to pass laws “securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” It reserves to the states or to the people, via the Tenth Amendment, certain unspecified powers not delegated to the federal government. These could include the power to recognize exclusive rights in “writings and discoveries” generated by artificially intelligent …

Regulating Data Monetization, Peter Ormerod

Texas A&M Law Review

Companies today generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year by collecting massive amounts of information about human activity and wringing predictive insights from it. The scale of these influence activities is stunning: your driving habits dictate your car insurance rates, buying the wrong thing will increase your borrowing costs, and the information ecosystem you inhabit is finely tuned for keeping your attention available to the highest bidder.

States have recently enacted new consumer privacy laws that confer on individuals a series of generally applicable rights over their personal information. But this approach has proven ineffective at disciplining firms’ data …

Adjudicating 35 U.S.C. § 112(A): The "Person Of Ordinary Skill In The Art" Conundrum And How To Address It, Matthew T. Simmons

Texas A&M Law Review

A viable alternative for adjudicating issues under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) of the Patent Act is needed due to the difficulties of trying these issues to a lay jury. Congress agreed when it enacted the America Invents Act (“AIA”), which created alternative proceedings for challenging patent validity post-grant, including post-grant review (“PGR”) and inter partes review (“IPR”). In theory, PGR proceedings permit the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to adjudicate whether one or more claims of a patent are valid on § 112 grounds. In practice, history has shown that the limitations …

Combatting Ai-Generated Child Sexual Exploitation And Abuse Material: An Analysis Of India’S Techno-Legal Response, Dhruv Garg, Dedipyaman Shukla

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) presents a significant threat to child safety online, enabling the rapid creation and dissemination of child sexual exploitation and abuse material (“CSEAM”) at an unprecedented scale. This paper examines legal, institutional, and technical responses to AI-generated CSEAM in the Indian context, with a particular focus on the role of digital intermediaries, law enforcement coordination through the Sahyog Portal, and judicial interpretation under Indian law. Drawing on this analysis of key stakeholders, the paper argues for the orientation of India’s CSEAM framework towards proactive detection, and better integration between intermediaries and law enforcement. The …

Addressing Legal Uncertainties In Article Versions And Institutional Copyright Policies To Support Immediate Public Access To Federal Grant-Funded Publications, Yuanxiao Xu

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

New federal public access policies—mandated by the 2022 OSTP Memo and already adopted by several key federal grant-making agencies—require authors funded by federal grants to deposit peer-reviewed publications for immediate public access. This paper explains how grant- receiving institutions and their affiliated authors can dispel legal uncertainties and comply with the new public access policies. Section I delineates how valid prior licenses enable public deposit of manuscripts notwithstanding later publishing agreements transferring copyright to the journals. Section II discusses the different versions of a manuscript created during the publication process. Section III describes the different types of third-party contributions incorporated …

Masthead

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Ip @ The U - April 2026, Jorge L. Contreras, Jonas Anderson

Law School Historical Documents

Welcome to IP @ the U, a periodic newsletter for students, alumni, faculty and friends of the University of Utah College of Law's Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. This issue covers highlights from spring 2026.

Voices From Beyond The Grave: Protecting The Audio Of Murder Victims Through (Intellectual) Property Law, Alexandra M. Hudson

Washington and Lee Law Review

For most, the audio of a deceased loved one is a treasured keepsake. For the families of violent crime victims, it can be a harrowing reminder of their loved one’s death. And it can also be a source of content for true crime podcasters.

When a person dies from a violent crime and their killer is prosecuted, the audio associated with the crime (body camera footage, 911 calls, surveillance footage, etc.) frequently becomes public record. Public record laws vary greatly across the United States but typically err toward disclosure to promote government transparency. Broad public record laws benefit the public …

Private Coverage, Public Risk: The Role Of Cyber Insurance In National Security Governance, Deborah L. Johnson

Faculty Publications

This Article explores the growing yet underexamined role of the commercial cyber insurance market in shaping the United States' approach to cybersecurity readiness. It argues that, as cyber threats against U.S. critical infrastructure and essential services increase, commercial cyber insurance has quietly come to function as a de facto governance tool in national cybersecurity. In hospitals, water and energy systems, and other public-facing sectors, policy language, underwriting questionnaires, and post-breach claims practices help define what counts as "reasonable" security, influence how organizations plan for and respond to incidents, and affect the pace and scope of recovery after an attack. Yet …

To Compete Or Noncompete: Lessons On The Impact Of Unenforceable Noncompete Agreements In The Entertainment Industry, Guy Mannick

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Economic and legal literature has increasingly focused on how the American legal system fails workers. One way it does so is through employee noncompetition agreements (“NCA” or “noncompete”) that limit a worker’s ability to join another company, often for better compensation and/or more responsibility. Some states enforce NCAs if they are reasonable in scope, geography, and duration; others either prohibit their application to certain types of workers or (as in California) outright prohibit them in most circumstances. More narrowly, new empirical literature about the behavioral effects of unenforceable noncompete agreements raises new questions about the behavioral impact on workers.

This …

The Racialized Treadmill Of Robotic Agriculture: Colonial Legacies, Legal Exceptionalism, And Labour Control, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The title of this paper draws on two historical meanings of the word ‘‘treadmill”. First, it references the economic concept of the ‘‘agricultural technology treadmill”, which describes how technological advances in farming lead to market consolidation, pushing smaller producers out while benefiting agribusiness oligopolies. Second, it invokes the literal treadmill, which was invented in 1818 as a punitive labour technology and a ‘‘rational” tool to discipline racialized and indentured labourers in colonial plantations. By connecting these two threads in agricultural technology — economic domination and racialized labor control — this paper examines how robotics and automation in modern agriculture perpetuate …