Professor Maniatis focuses on recent case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to illustrate the present disorderly state of European trade mark law. With the advent of the Community Trade Mark within the European Union, the ECJ is in the process of shaping a new body of trade mark precedent that will influence both national registration laws and future legislative...
This Article considers the role of intellectual property rights in research joint ventures. Professor Saunders begins by outlining the various advantages of pursuing research in a joint venture business form, including the sharing of expertise and investment costs. The author identifies and elucidates the intellectual property issues, as well as related licensing and antitrust...
Mr. Gardner explores the evolving role of business lawyers in the knowledge economy and explains how they must add value to clients
Mr. Burk illustrates that federal courts have diverged along industry-specific paths when deciding patent cases. Burk highlights courts
Ms. Seifert discusses the factors that shape harmonization of a global patent law system. She touches on how the philosophical differences of the United States, Japanese, and European patent systems have created difficulty in establishing a cohesive patent law system. The author then discusses international harmonization efforts such as WIPO and TRIPs and national patent law...
Mr. Holsen discusses the history and development of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is a non-profit corporation that privately manages the Internet. He asserts that United States law does not properly support ICANN in its mission to solve the complex problems facing the Internet. One of the most important issues facing the Internet is the...
Mr. McCullough discusses the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the traditional and open source models of software development. He argues that the "DMCA supports the 'Traditional Model
Dr. Calboli discusses trademark exhaustion in the European Union. She proposes an international exhaustion standard to replace the community-wide exhaustion standard. In an international system, a trademark owner would exhaust his rights in other national jurisdictions when trademarked goods are placed on the market in any national jurisdiction where the trademark owner enjoys...
A rise in European Patent litigation has increased awareness of patent enforcement and its difficulty given the lack of harmony between the European Patent Convention (EPC) and the European Community (Community) patent laws. The EPC and the Community have both attempted to harmonize certain aspects of their patent laws. In 1999, the EPC Member States developed four options for...
Jessica Litman's book focuses on the Copyright Act, in relation to modern entertainment technology. For example, each time an image from the Internet is viewed through a personal computer, the viewer has reproduced the original image, because a computer's RAM makes a temporary copy in order to allow the image to be viewed. The entertainment industry's concern about potential...
An objective of copyright law is to promote creativity and the dissemination of ideas by granting artists, writers, and other creators of artistic works a limited monopoly in their works. MP3 files consist of a digital audio compression algorithm that makes an audio file smaller without reducing sound quality. One problem created by this technology is that when combined with the...
Jonathan Ward discusses viability of two means for resolution of disputes related to cybersquatting. Cybersquatting occurs when a party registers a domain name that contains someone else's trademark and then attempts to profit by selling or licensing the name to that party. Cybersquatting tends to be classified as direct cybersquatting and typosquatting, and actions involving...
Adam Omar Shanti explores the concepts of dilution and famousness under Trademark Law. Dilution is a protection afforded "famous
One current topic of trademark law that has become a major issue in recent years is foreign trademark rights. The business world is shrinking, and large international outfits need to protect the goodwill in their trademarks on a global scale. The key to gaining international trademark rights is in understanding foreign countries
Jonathan Mezrich argues that as businesses become more dependent upon computer software, they will also seek a means of protection for their investment in the software they purchase. Currently, a popular means of protection is through source code escrow. However, despite the current popularity of escrow accounts, Mr. Mezrich writes that these mechanisms may in fact not actually...
In this article, Mr. Rogers examines the tension in the digital world between the application of (a) antitrust law, which promotes competition and (b) copyright law, which limits competition in order to promote progress in science and art. He reviews the prohibitions against the exercise of monopoly power in section 2 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C.) and proposes a test for anti...
Honorable Randall Rader, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit discusses current criticisms of the Federal Circuit and the speed of which the Circuit sets precedent. Before addressing these issues, Judge Rader posits a belief that the standard by which the Circuit is being judged is incorrect. Judge Rader's speech gives a foundation by which a correct...
Conflicts between patent and trademark law arise when the owner of a patent seeks to protect the physical configuration disclosed in a patent. Patent law requires that information in a patent be dedicated to the public upon expiration of the patent; however, trademark law can be used upon expiration of the patent to continue to exclude certain aspects of the art disclosed in the...
In In re Deuel, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of a patent applicant and found that DNA molecules encoding a protein were nonobvious under section 103 of the Patent Act. Since then, companies specializing in genomic research have filed numerous DNA sequence applications, instigating a troubling trend of patent filings within the...
This Comment examines whether the conformity achieved by international technology treaties is at the expense of utility. Specifically, the author posits that international agreements do not serve the needs of rich and poor nations alike. Instead, the author advocates for increased autonomy by claiming better solutions will be produced when nations enter bi-lateral agreements. In...
The Madrid Agreement enables trademark owners in signatory countries to secure international trademark registration by filing one application instead of filing separate applications in each foreign country's trademark office. The United States has never acceded to the Agreement because critics have held that the Agreement favors registration-based trademark systems rather than...
The case of State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., which extended patent protection to a computerized financial method, was regarded by many as a revolutionary expansion of patentable subject matter. The author, however, argues that this notion is overstated. The author explains that the State Street Bank decision will be of little consequence because...
The scale of copyright piracy has changed, allowing creative works to be distributed globally with a click of a mouse. People's attitudes towards infringing on someone else's protected work have changed as well due to the simplicity and speed of the digital infringing process. This lecture discusses how one can tailor copyright law to accommodate technological changes. First, the...