Inventions Made for Hire
Despite the continued reliance on the rhetorical device that modern invention is performed by individual inventors in their garages, few would disagree that today most patentable inventive activity occurs in…
Post-Booker Judicial Discretion and Sentencing Trends in Criminal Intellectual Property Cases: Empirical Analysis and Societal Implications
As a result of the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Booker v. United States that rendered the United States Sentencing Commission’s Sentencing Guidelines advisory only and no longer mandatory, district…
Conception and Misconception in Joint Inventorship
The Patent Act’s omission to define inventorship leaves a paramount concept in a legal vacuum. Where courts have stepped in to fill the void, they have largely deferred to the…
Copyright Conspiracy: How the New Copyright Alert System May Violate the Sherman Act
In July 2011, a consortium of major content providers and Internet service providers announced their intention to implement the Copyright Alert System, a graduated response plan aimed at stemming online…
The Most Fascinating Kind of Art: Fashion Design Protection as a Moral Right
In recent years, politicians, academics, and industry professionals have argued vehemently that copyright protection should extend to cover fashion designs, which are currently excluded under the “useful articles” doctrine. Copyright…
Work as Weapon, Author as Target: Why Parodies That Target Authors (Not Just Their Works) Should Be Fair Uses
In April 2011, comedic musician “Weird Al” Yankovic sought Lady Gaga’s permission to release his song “Perform This Way,” a spoof on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” that parodied the…
Brand Renegades
Recent appearances of trademarks in popular culture—in rap lyrics, on reality TV shows, even in youth riots—have raised the question whether the owners of those trademarks might pursue legal remedies…
Choking the Channel of Public Information: Re-Examination of an Eighteenth-Century Warning about Copyright and Free Speech
The U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft gave First Amendment importance to the topic of copyright history. In measuring whether Congress has altered the “traditional contours” of copyright such…
Caught in the Middle: Reducing the Uncertainty Created by the FDA and the Patent System for Genetic Diagnostic Test Makers
The scientific complexity of genetic diagnostic testing produces test results which are often flawed or difficult to interpret. Therefore, increased regulation of these tests is necessary to protect consumers and…
Ideas and the Public Domain: Revisiting INS v. AP in the Internet Age
The integration of the Internet into all aspects of society has led to the quick and widespread distribution of information in digital form. This digital information can be easily aggregated…