Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School July 19, 2012 On July 3, 2012, the European Court of Justice issued an important ruling on the question of the sale of used digital works. The case raises questions at the intersection of copyright and contract, and we are seeing different approaches taken in the [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law June 18, 2012 The Second Circuit’s April 5 decision in Viacom, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., finding YouTube covered by the DMCA host service provider safe harbor with respect to most of its hosting of repeatedly posted infringing content, now has echoes in two EU jurisdictions, in [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 12, 2012 Earlier this year, Yahoo made headlines when it filed a blockbuster patent lawsuit against Facebook. The basics of the case looked promising. Yahoo could credibly cast itself as an Internet pioneer; and the company has a promising portfolio of patents related to online advertising and [...]
Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California at Berkeley School of Law June 8, 2012 The mobile phone patent wars, which have been heating up over the past year and more, serve up a dizzying array of complex issues. This begins with the technology itself – a marvelous marriage between miniature hardware, sophisticated communications, and amazing [...]
Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law May 29, 2012 The extent of federal power over our lives has been much in the news recently, what with the Supreme Court holding days of hearings on whether the Affordable Care Act is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. Like the [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School May 22, 2012 One of the nice things about teaching is that you are constantly forced to confront the fundamentals of whatever subject you have in front of you. For me, when I teach copyright, I start the class with a blank piece of paper. Really [...]
Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California at Berkeley School of Law May 17, 2012 The secondary patent market is red hot these days.1 The focus, almost exclusively, is on the purchase and sale of large-scale patent portfolios. Some of these transactions stem from technologies that are no longer considered strategically crucial to the selling [...]
Peter S. Menell* May 3, 2012 Nearly a decade after the emergence of user-generated content (UGC) websites, appellate courts finally rendered their interpretation of the applicability of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) safe harbor with respect to such entities during the past several months. These much-anticipated decisions highlight the difficulties of interpreting copyright law [...]
Rodney A. Smolla, President, Furman University April 30, 2012 The Supreme Court in Golan v. Holder1 upheld Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA),2 which granted copyright protection to preexisting works of Berne Convention member countries, protected in their country of origin, but lacking protection in the United States. The Court in Golan [...]
Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law April 24, 2012 In an earlier entry in this series, I discussed an important issue in copyright law – whether the first sale doctrine applies to goods manufactured abroad. The Supreme Court was set to decide the issue in Costco v. Omega, but the Court split [...]