The NYU Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law is proud to present Volume 8 Issue 1 of the Journal. While PDFs of the individual articles may be found accompanying their respective posts, you may view and download a PDF of the complete issue here.
Legal journals are sometimes criticized as disconnected from the real world or labeled sounding chambers for academics. Like many of our favorite publications, our fall issue stands in stark contrast to this characterization. In what follows, you will find four discussions of real, pressing legal issues and practical legal solutions.
First, Professor Charles Tait Graves analyzes a striking disparity between the law of invention assignment contracts and the work for hire doctrine under the Copyright Act. To illustrate the divergence of the two areas of law, Professor Graves provides readers with a comprehensive legal background, a survey of the cases that have considered the conflict, and an enlightening discussion of the policy implications at play when the areas overlap. This article is the first of a three-part series in which Professor Graves calling attention to under-analyzed areas of intellectual property law that impact employee mobility.
Next, Professor Nicholas P. Terry invites readers to consider the future of healthcare given Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s recently announced joint venture. Professor Terry begins with a case study of the expressed intentions and the past habits of a key member of the venture, Amazon. He then uses lessons from the case study to project a likely future of the healthcare venture before launching into a discussion of the possibilities of the venture, giving color to what some have hailed as the digital revolution of healthcare. Professor Terry concludes with an important discussion of existing regulatory structures as well as how hybrid healthcare should be regulated in the future.
Diving back into the world of copyright and authorship, Jennifer Yamin provides a critical analysis of how courts have applied the Aalmuhammed joint authorship test in the entertainment industry. Via an analysis of cases using the authorship test applied to screenplays, songs, and music videos, Ms. Yamin demonstrates the shortcomings of using the Aalmuhammed framework as a one-size-fits-all test. Ms. Yamin concludes by providing a starting point for reforming our evaluation of joint authorship.
Finally, Brette Trost reminds readers of the importance of intellectual property law. Using the 2016 Christopher Correa Major League Baseball scandal as a tangible example, Ms. Trost provides a riveting analysis of how the Economic Espionage Act can be used to prevent trade secret theft in professional sports. She further provides a compelling argument for why the Economic Espionage Act (that is, trade secret theft), rather than the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is the appropriate avenue for prosecuting behavior such as Correa’s, especially given the fluid nature of the talent pool in major league sports.
I hope that you find this issue both captivating and didactic, yet far from an academic sounding chamber. On behalf of the 2018-2019 JIPEL editorial board, thank you for reading.
Sincerely,
Philip Simon
Editor-in-Chief
NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law