Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

That Thing Ain't Human: The Artificiality Of "Human Authorship" And The Intelligence In Expanding Copyright Authorship To Fully-Autonomous Ai, Ernest Oleksy

Cleveland State Law Review

The U.S. Copyright Review Board (the "Board") decided that works entirely created by fully-autonomous artificial intelligence ("AI") are not entitled to copyright protections. The Board based its decision on a copyrightability requirement referred to as “human authorship.” However, the Copyright Act of 1976 (the "Act") never mentions a “human” requirement to copyright authorship, nor do most of the Board’s cited authorities. Denying authorship to intellectually-impressive and economically-valuable works under a poorly-established legal subelement is antithetical to copyright law’s history and to Congress’s constitutional mandate to “promote . . . [the] useful [a]rts . . . .” It leaves creators who …

Masthead

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

New Problem, Same Old Ecpa: Facebook, Inc. V. State Of New Jersey And The Electronic Communications Privacy Act’S Growing Inadequacy, Austin Fauni

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

One Step Forward Or Two Steps Back For The Music Industry: Analyzing The Statutory And Practical Issues In Title I Of The Music Modernization Act, Gabriel Ross

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Adopting A Solution To Copyright’S Orphan Works Problem, Kylie Arman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

No abstract provided.

Lighting The Fuses: The Third Circuit Loads A Volley Against Interface Copyright Ability In Pyrotechnics V. Xfx, Ryan Graham

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Trademarks In An Algorithmic World, Christine Haight Farley

Washington Law Review

According to the sole normative foundation for trademark protection—“search costs” theory—trademarks transmit useful information to consumers, enabling an efficient marketplace. The marketplace, however, is in the midst of a fundamental change. Increasingly, retail is virtual, marketing is data-driven, and purchasing decisions are automated by AI. Predictive analytics are changing how consumers shop. Search costs theory no longer accurately describes the function of trademarks in this marketplace. Consumers now have numerous digital alternatives to trademarks that more efficiently provide them with increasingly accurate product information. Just as store shelves are disappearing from consumers’ retail experience, so are trademarks disappearing from their …

United States Social Security Administration Response To The Office Of Science And Technology Policy Memo, 2022: Public Access Plan (December 2023)

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

SSA response to OSTP memo, 2022: Public Access Plan (December 2023)

In Satan We Trust: The Satanic Temple’S Ongoing Crusade To Protect Abortion Rights, Bradley Koberg

Cardozo Law Review

In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court overruled the nearly fifty-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. This was one of several decisions in which the newly minted conservative supermajority undermined what could be seen as progressive precedents. At the same time, the Court has been elevating religious liberty claims and strengthening legal protections for religious individuals and organizations (predominantly Christian). For anybody who cares about the “so-called separation of . . . church and state,” this conservative Christian reformation taking place in the nation’s highest court is a cause for concern.

However, …

Tech Supremacy: The New Arms Race Between China And The United States, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

In the brewing tech war between the United States and China, the quest for tech supremacy is in full force. Through enacting a series of laws and policies, China aims to reach its goal of tech supremacy. If China succeeds, U.S. corporations will face a daunting task in competing against Chinese products and services in core industries and in sectors where artificial intelligence and technological breakthroughs reign. This Article is the first to identify and analyze China’s 2022 Law on Science and Technology Progress, Personal Information Protection Law, Made in China 2025, National Intellectual Property Strategies, and digital currency e-CNY; …

Distinguishing The Fair Use And Fair Dealing Doctrines In Copyright Law—Much Ado About Nothing?, Cheng Lim Saw

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It is often assumed and taken for granted that there is a gulf separating the fair use and fair dealing doctrines in copyright law arising principally from the ‘open v closed’ distinction that is made of the statutory schemes in the respective fair use and fair dealing jurisdictions.It will be argued in this article, after a comparative and comprehensive study of the case law and of the various (overlapping) fairness factors, that this distinction merely reflects a difference as to legislative form, rather than the substance of the fairness analysis that may ultimately bear on the outcome of a fairness …

The Gptjudge: Justice In A Generative Ai World, Maura R. Grossman, Paul W. Grimm, Daniel G. Brown, Molly (Yiming) Xu

Duke Law & Technology Review

Generative AI (“GenAI”) systems such as ChatGPT recently have developed to the point where they can produce computer-generated text and images that are difficult to differentiate from human-generated text and images. Similarly, evidentiary materials such as documents, videos, and audio recordings that are AI-generated are becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate from those that are not AI-generated. These technological advancements present significant challenges to parties, their counsel, and the courts in determining whether evidence is authentic or fake. Moreover, the explosive proliferation and use of GenAI applications raises concerns about whether litigation costs will dramatically increase as parties are forced to …

No Bullying Allowed Here: Adopting A Misuse Doctrine To Defeat Trademark Bullies, Jessica Shechtman

Cardozo Law Review

In order to maintain trademark rights, trademark owners are encouraged to enforce and police their trademarks through civil actions. Enforcing trademark rights is encouraged and incentivized by the Lanham Act because failure to do so may result in harsh consequences for trademark owners. Some of these consequences include weakening of strength or abandonment of the mark, which may result in loss of trademark rights. However, large companies go above and beyond to police and protect their trademarks. At times, this overenforcement is unethical and crosses a fine line between following the law and abusing the law, causing a number of …

Defragging Feminist Cyberlaw, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1996, Judge Frank Easterbrook famously observed that any effort to create a field called cyberlaw would be “doomed to be shallow and miss unifying principles.” He was wrong, but not for the reason other scholars have stated. Feminism is a unifying principle of cyberlaw, which alternately amplifies and abridges the feminist values of consent, safety, and accessibility. Cyberlaw simply hasn’t been understood that way—until now.

In computer science, “defragging” means bringing together disparate pieces of data so they are easier to access. Inspired by that process, this Article offers a new approach to cyberlaw that illustrates how feminist values …

Fairness And Fair Use In Generative Ai, Matthew Sag

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Historical Kinship And Categorical Mischief: The Use And Misuse Of Doctrinal Borrowing In Intellectual Property Law, Mark Bartholomew, John Tehranian

Journal Articles

Analogies are ubiquitous in legal reasoning, and, in copyright jurisprudence, courts frequently turn to patent law for guidance. From introducing doctrines meant to regulate online intermediaries to evaluating the constitutionality of resurrecting copyrights to works from the public domain, judges turn to patent law analogies to lend ballast to their decisions. At other times, however, patent analogies with copyright law are quickly discarded and differences between the two regimes highlighted. Why? In examining the transplantation of doctrinal frameworks from one intellectual property field to another, this Article assesses the circumstances in which courts engage in doctrinal borrowing, discerns their rationale …

Copyright, Data Mining And Developing Models For South African Natural Language Processing, Chijioke Okorie

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This paper sets out the issues of copyright ownership and risk of copyright infringement liability raised by data science research use of data held by public bodies (in particular, public service broadcasters) in South Africa. Considering both the fair dealing exception in South Africa’s Copyright Act of 1978 and the proposed fair use provision in its Copyright Amendment Bill B13F-2017, the paper discusses these issues elaborating on the reasons why data science researchers in public research institutions should not require a copyright licence or be considered to be infringing copyright when they use copyright-protected materials held by public bodies for …

Copyright For Graduate Works: Do I Need Permission To Use This?, Stephanie Wiegand

Bear GRADS

When writing a graduate work, you may come across other excellent works that elevate your own work – a diagram explaining a process, a survey instrument for collecting data, an artwork that illustrates a concept, a piece of sheet music for analysis, and more. How can you ethically and legally incorporate these works into your research and writing? This session will discuss the basics of using portions of copyrighted works in your graduate work and provide real-life examples.

Intellectual Property And “The Lost Year” Of Covid-19 Deaths, Madhavi Sunder, Haochen Sun

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Protecting intellectual property (IP) is a question of life and death. COVID-19 vaccines, partially incentivized by IP, are estimated to have saved nearly 20 million lives worldwide during the first year of their availability in 2021. However, most of the benefits of this life-saving technology went to high- and upper-middle-income countries. Despite 10 billion vaccines being produced by the end of 2021, only 4 percent of people in low-income countries were fully vaccinated. Paradoxically, IP may also be partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost in 2021, due to an insufficient supply of vaccines and inequitable access during …

Ai And The Issue Of Human-Centricity In Copyright Law, Arul George Scaria

Popular Media

This article urges Indian policymakers and courts to be cautious in extending existing IP protections to work generated by Artificial Intelligence. Reflecting on the concept of human-centricity in copyright law, it draws upon a recent US District Court judgement in Stephen Thaler v. Shira Perlmutter, which deals with the question of whether a work autonomously generated by AI should be copyrightable. It goes on to examine the Indian copyright regime in light of changing attitudes to AI regulation across the world.