Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School October 13, 2015 That is the clickbait headline for last week’s Ninth Circuit decision in Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC.  The issue in the case was whether a particular set of so-called hot yoga practices could be copyrighted.  The Ninth Circuit [...]

Dean Rodney A. Smolla, Delaware Law School, Widener University September 23, 2015 I have written previously on two pending trademark disputes involving the denial or cancellation of trademark registration on the grounds that the marks are “disparaging.”  The first was In re Tam,1  in which a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law August 24, 2015 Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine cover story featured a remarkably sanguine article about the prospects for creators and creativity in the online environment.  See “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t.”  Good news in the creative arena being hard to find, the author’s perception of [...]

Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law August 20, 2015 Google’s role as a copyright defendant has provided fodder for many an essay in this series, particularly with regard to the Google Books litigation.  (Incidentally, that litigation celebrates its tenth anniversary next month – and it’s still going strong.)  A more recent Google [...]

Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California at Berkeley School of Law August 10, 2015 Fritz Machlup famously said that if we did not have a patent system, there is not enough evidence to show we should create one.  But he also said that because we do have one, there is not enough evidence to [...]

Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School August 6, 2015 I am in the middle of a media/education experiment.  I suspect that I am reaching the point of the new parent armed with a cell phone who wants to show you just one more picture of the new baby, but maybe I can [...]

Dean Rodney A. Smolla, Delaware Law School, Widener University July 27, 2015 In an IP Viewpoints piece I posted in April 2015, I expressed the hope that First Amendment principles would be brought to bear against the Patent and Trademark Office in its efforts to cancel the Washington Redskins’ trademark registration.  In that article I [...]

Prof. Rodney A. Smolla, University of Georgia Law School June 30, 2015 In a recent IP Viewpoints post my colleague Professor Randal Picker discussed the recent Ninth Circuit en banc opinion in Garcia v. Google.1  At the end of Professor Picker’s excellent essay he notes that he had chipped away at a part of Garcia, [...]

Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 23, 2015 Hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass has been widely criticized in recent months, with newspaper editorials, advocacy organizations, and even some members of Congress publicly condemning Bass’s strategy of using a relatively new Patent Office procedure to challenge particular pharmaceutical patents while at the same time shorting [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law June 15, 2015 Copyright generally vests in the author, the human creator of the work.  But because, at least until recently, most authors have been ill-equipped to commercialize and disseminate their works on their own, the author has granted rights to intermediaries to market her works.  [...]