Author(s): Pamela Samuelson Year: 2005 Abstract: This essay considers positive, normative and political reasons for creating a map of the public domain and contiguous terrains. For far too many years, the public domain has either been invisible or been viewed in a negative way. By positively describing the contents of the public domain, it is […]
Challenges in Mapping the Public Domain
Intellectual Property
Author(s): Year: 2005 Abstract: This chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Law and Economics (A.M. Polinsky & S. Shavell (eds.)) provides a comprehensive survey of the burgeoning literature on the law and economics of intellectual property. It is organized around the two principal objectives of intellectual property law: promoting innovation and aesthetic creativity (focusing on […]
Governance of Intellectual Resources and Disintegration of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age
Author(s): Peter S. Menell Year: 2010 Abstract: The Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange brought into focus whether intellectual property policy should follow reflexively in the wake of tangible property doctrines or instead look to the distinctive market failures and institutional features of intellectual resources. Professor Richard Epstein argues in a recent article that […]
Forty Years of Wondering in the Wilderness and No Closer to the Promised Land: Bilski’s Superficial Textualism and the Missed Opportunity to Ground Patent Law Interpretation and Return Patent Law to its Technology Mooring
Author(s): Peter S. Menell Year: 2010 Abstract: This article critically analyzes Bilski v. Kappos, the Supreme Court’s first decision on patentable subject matter since the early 1980s. It shows how the majority’s effort to shoehorn patentable subject matter into a superficial textualist mold obfuscates patentable subject matter boundaries and undermines the patent system on multiple […]
Privacy on the Books and on the Ground
Author(s): Deirdre K. Mulligan and Kenneth A. Bamberger Year: 2010 Abstract: U.S. privacy law is under attack. Scholars and advocates criticize it as weak, incomplete, and confusing, and argue that it fails to empower individuals to control the use of their personal information. These critiques present a largely accurate description of the law “on the […]
Pre-existing Confusion in Copyright’s Work-for-Hire Doctrine
Author(s): Peter S. Menell Year: 2002 Abstract: In order to protect authors and artists from unremunerative transfers of copyright, Congress for the first time created, in the Copyright Act of 1976, an inalienable right to terminate transfers of copyrights during a five-year window beginning 35 years from the date of the transfer. Such inalienablity, however, […]
Privacy Issues of the W3C Geolocation API
Author(s): Deirdre K. Mulligan Year: 2010 Abstract: The W3C’s Geolocation API may rapidly standardize the transmission of location information on the Web, but, in dealing with such sensitive information, it also raises serious privacy concerns. We analyze the manner and extent to which the current W3C Geolocation API provides mechanisms to support privacy. We propose […]
Section 337 Patent Investigation Management Guide
Author(s): Peter S. Menell Year: 2010 Abstract: The U.S. International Trade Commission has emerged as one of the most salient patent enforcement venues in the United States. Its fast-track procedures – typically producing determinations within 12 to 16 months of initiation of an investigation – and potent exclusion remedy have brought the ITC to center […]
Internalizing Identity Theft
Author(s): Chris Jay Hoofnagle Year: 2010 Abstract: Why has identity theft remained so prevalent, in light of the development of ever more sophisticated fraud detection tools? Identity theft remains at 2003 levels – 9.9 million Americans fell victim to the crime in 2009. One faction explains the identity theft as a problem of a lack […]
Harmonization and its Discontents: A Case Study of TRIPS Implementation in India’s Pharmaceutical Sector
Author(s): Amy Kapczynski Year: 2010 Abstract: In 2005, India amended its patent law to provide product patents on medicines, to comply with the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement. In order to mitigate the impact on access to medicines, India at the same time adopted an expansive menu of flexibilities in its patent law. Reviewing these important flexibilities, […]