Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Foreword, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Most of us think we are familiar with graffiti – lettering on trains or graphic images on walls that follow us as we walk by. But Enrico Bonadio’s new book on graffiti and street art opens a door to more complex and nuanced worlds of artists and their communities. The focus is on everyday creators of graffiti and street art. Built from nearly 100 interviews and hundreds of hours of observation, the book is filled with the voices of artists and vivid details of their plein air studios and interactions. Also present in the book is the author, who weaves …

Memorizing Trade Secrets, Timothy E. Murphy

University of Richmond Law Review

The earliest trade secret cases recognized that remembered information raised unique issues in trade secret misappropriation claims. However, courts struggled with exactly how to address remembered information, as opposed to information taken in tangible form. The modern trend, according to one case from the Washington Supreme Court, is to ignore the distinction and treat remembered information the same as information taken in tangible form for purposes of trade secret misappropriation claims. However, this case may have prematurely signaled the demise of remembered information’s relevance to a trade secret claim. Particularly during the pandemic era, where increased employee mobility is placing …

Harmonizing Music Theory And Music Law, Peter Nicolas

Articles

Those litigating and adjudicating music copyright disputes find themselves at the intersection of two complex fields: U.S. copyright law and music theory. While the attorneys and judges typically have at least some experience with the former, neither they nor the jurors typically have formal training in or experience with the latter. As a result, legal opinions purporting to incorporate musical concepts sometimes fail to do so accurately, resulting in decisions that are inconsistent with copyright law and policy.

This Article seeks to harmonize U.S. copyright law with relevant principles of music theory. It begins with an accessible primer on basic …

Fables Of Scarcity In Ip, Zahr K. Said

Articles

In this chapter, I use methods drawn from literary analysis to bear on artificial scarcity and explore how literary and legal storytelling engages in scarcity mongering. I find three particular narrative strategies calculated to compel a conclusion in favor of propertization: the spectacle of need, the diversionary tactic, and the rallying cry. First, I unpack the spectacle of need and its diversionary aspects through several literary accounts of scarcity and starvation. I juxtapose Franz Kafka's “A Hunger Artist,” a story explicitly centered on a wasting body, with J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K. Second, to explore how …

Patents, Validity Challenges, And Private Ordering: A New Dispensation For The Easy-Challenge Era, Rob Merges

Nevada Law Journal

The Supreme Court promoted private challenges to patent validity in various cases from the 1940s to the 1960s, culminating in 1969. That year in Lear v. Adkins, the Court overturned the traditional rule prohibiting patent licensees from challenging the validity of licensed patents. Lear and its ilk were premised on the important public benefits of patent validity challenges, as well as the belief that a patent licensee or assignee has uniquely powerful reasons to challenge a patent. Case law culminating in Lear upset a century-old set of patent-specific rules that had been adopted from—and reflected the values of—common law private …

The Case For A Cda Section 230 Notice-And-Takedown Duty, Michael L. Rustad, Thomas H. Koenig

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Coming Copyright Judge Crisis, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Dave Fagundes

Articles

Commentary about the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in United States v. Arthrex, Inc. has focused on the nexus between patent and administrative law. But this overlooks the decision's seismic and as-yet unappreciated implication for copyright law: Arthrex renders the Copyright Royalty Board ("CRB") unconstitutional. The CRB has suffered constitutional challenge since its 2004 inception, but these were seemingly resolved in 2011 when the D.C. Circuit held that the CRB's composition did not offend the Appointments Clause as long as Copyright Royalty Judges ("CRJs") were removable atwill. But when the Court invalidated the selection process for administrative patent judges on a …

Privatizing Copyright, Xiyin Tang

Michigan Law Review

Much has been written, and much is understood, about how and why digital platforms regulate free expression on the internet. Much less has been written— and even much less is understood—about how and why digital platforms regulate creative expression on the internet—expression that makes use of others’ copyrighted content. While § 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act regulates user-generated content incorporating copyrighted works, just as § 230 of the Communications Decency Act regulates other user speech on the internet, it is, in fact, rarely used by the largest internet platforms—Facebook and YouTube. Instead, as this Article details, creative speech …

Generative Artificial Intelligence And Copyright Law, Christopher T. Zirpoli

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are raising new questions about how copyright law principles such as authorship, infringement, and fair use will apply to content created or used by AI. So-called “generative AI” computer programs—such as Open AI’s DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT programs, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion program, and Midjourney’s self-titled program—are able to generate new images, texts, and other content (or “outputs”) in response to a user’s textual prompts (or “inputs”). These generative AI programs are “trained” to generate such works partly by exposing them to large quantities of existing works such as writings, photos, paintings, and other …

Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. V. Vip Products Llc: Brief Of Amici Curiae 30 Trademark Law Professors In Support Of Respondent, Aaron Perzanowski

Appellate Briefs

Amici are 30 law professors who teach and write extensively about trademark law and other intellectual property law subjects. Amici have no personal interest in this case. Amici’s sole interest is in the orderly development of trademark law in a way that serves the public interest, in part by ensuring the proper balance between legitimate trademark interests and strong First Amendment speech interests.<\p>

Trademark law has expanded dramatically in recent decades, opening the door to claims against parties that are primarily selling speech. Those claims would have been inconceivable when the Lanham Act was passed.<\p>

Early courts facing these expanded …

Cardozo Intellectual Property Law Society's Spring General Body Meeting, Cardozo Intellectual Property Law Society (Ipls)

2022–2023 Flyers

No abstract provided.

The Freedom Of Influencing, Hannibal Travis

University of Miami Law Review

Social media stars and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) Act are clashing. Influencer marketing is a preferred way for entertainers, pundits, and everyday people to monetize their audiences and popularity. Manufacturers, service providers, retailers, and advertising agencies leverage influencers to reach into millions or even billions of consumer devices, capturing minutes or seconds of the market’s fleeting attention. FTC enforcement actions and private lawsuits have targeted influencers for failing to disclose the nature of a sponsorship relationship with a manufacturer, marketer, or service provider. Such a failure to disclose payments prominently is very common in Hollywood films and on radio …

Taking Bytes: Sound Recordings, Digital Sampling, And The De Minimis Exception, Elizabeth C. Vista

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With Indian Supreme Court Justice S. Ravinda Bhat, Cardozo Intellectual Property And Information Law Program, Floersheimer Center For Constitutional Democracy

2023 Event Invitations

Join us for a conversation with Indian Supreme Court Justice Shripathi Ravindra Bhat and Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Director of Cardozo’s Intellectual Property & Information Law Program. Hear about Justice Bhat's experience at the highest levels of judicial service and his insight into the law’s perennial capacity for social impact.

Click here to view the flyer.

A Conversation With Indian Supreme Court Justice S. Ravinda Bhat, Cardozo Intellectual Property And Information Law Program, Floersheimer Center For Constitutional Democracy

2022–2023 Flyers

Click here to view the event invitation.

Manajemen Aset Dan Strategi Pemanfaatan Hak Kekayaan Intelektual (Hak Cipta Sebagai Aset Tak Berwujud), Arya Adhitya

Technology and Economics Law Journal

Assets are one of the results of activities carried out by government agencies. One of these assets can be intellectual property rights (IPR), as intangible assets. IPR is one of the results of thinking or creativity of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) in official relations with Government Agencies. These IPRs are managed as assets belonging to government agencies. Management of IPR Assets is still not managed well, correctly and ideally. The implementation of IPR asset management needs to be carried out and maximized in order to provide benefits. One of the benefits generated is the economic benefits of the owners …

The Current State Of Student-Athlete Nil Rights: How Congress Should Respond To The Rapidly Changing Landscape Of Inter-Collegiate Sports, Kyle Aronson

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Collegiate student-athletes began signing sponsorship deals that compensate them for their name, image and likeness beginning in July 2021. Since its inception, the NCAA has prohibited student-athletes from receiving any outside monetary compensation to preserve traditional notions of amateurism. States have begun to pass legislation that allow for student-athlete compensation following recent decisions by the Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit suggesting that the NCAA’s historic practice may run afoul of antitrust law. This comment analyzes issues with the current state-by-state patchwork of laws that formulate the current landscape of collegiate sports. Finally, this comment will show why centralized, federal regulation …

Rebranding Batman, Alice Preminger

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

While one could reasonably characterize fan fiction as "socially contro- versial,” with some lauding the practice as a creative outlet and others meeting it with sneers, legally speaking, its position is undeniably precarious. Fan con- tent, including fan fiction and fan films, lives in the liminal space between cop- yright infringement and fair use. Fan creators argue their works are motivated by a desire to connect with beloved copyrighted expressive works—frequently popular media franchises—and are intended only for enjoyment by themselves and very small fan communities. Copyright owners find the practice of creating fan work far less innocuous, claiming the …

Never Tell Me The Odds: How To Avoid Infringement When Alluding To Copyrighted Works In Branding, Paul M. Matenaer

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Alluding to copyrighted works in branding is common, especially among small businesses that tend to fly under the radar of the large corporations which own those copyrights. The craft beer industry, for example, is fond of such allusions, incorporating references to movies, comic books, and video games in product names and beer labels. Whether to pay homage to the creative genius found in those copyrighted works or to cash in on popular enthusiasm for them, brand allusions to copyrighted works are common. However, such homages to copyrighted works can be as dangerous as flying into an asteroid field because they …

Against Progress: Intellectual Property And Fundamental Values In The Internet Age

Stanley H. Mervis Lecture

No abstract provided.