Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* April 14, 2010 My two prior contributions to IP Issues (Feb. 26, 2010, and Dec. 8, 2009) have not exhausted the questions the 1976 Act termination right raises. The Copyright Office recently issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking comments on a possible “gap” in the 1976 [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School April 5, 2010 The iPad arrived on Saturday. Not mine, unfortunately, as I want to see it live and in person before buying, but the iPad itself. I am not enough of a fanboy to have rushed out to see one immediately, though I confess [...]
by Prof. Justin Hughes, Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University March 25, 2010 A constitutional, but really badly named legal doctrine In her contributions to this series, Professor Jane Ginsburg has explored the termination-of-transfer provisions in American copyright law. The author’s power to reclaim her copyright 35 years after she agreed to its transfer is [...]
Prof. Justin Hughes, Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University March 25, 2010 A constitutional, but really badly named legal doctrine In her contributions to this series, Professor Jane Ginsburg has explored the termination-of-transfer provisions in American copyright law. The author’s power to reclaim her copyright 35 years after she agreed to its transfer is an [...]
Prof. Jim Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law March 10, 2010 For most of the history of Anglo-American copyright law, copyright was an opt-in system: Authors had to jump through certain regulatory hoops if they wanted to prevent others from copying their works without consent. These threshold formalities included registering their works with a [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* February 26, 2010 In our previous column (Dec. 8, 2009) we addressed the history and policy of authors’ reversion rights in U.S. copyright law, as well as the general outlines of the 1976 Act provisions on terminations of grants of copyright. In this column, we will [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman*, UCLA School of Law February 23, 2010 Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin held a much-anticipated “fairness hearing” during which a chorus of interested parties spoke both for and against Google’s proposed settlement to its Book Search litigation. My own view aligns closely to the view articulated there by the [...]
Peter S. Menell, Professor of Law, University of California-Berkeley School of Law February 17, 2010 A little more than a decade ago, Napster rocked the music industry by enabling anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to costlessly and virtually anonymously distribute files to millions of others. As cyberculture journalist Joseph Menn observed at [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School February 10, 2010 On Feb. 4, the Department of Justice filed its second statement of interest in the pending Google Book Search (GBS) case. We now have a full slate of second-round filings as we head toward the fairness hearing set for a New York [...]
Prof. Stan Liebowitz, University of Texas at Dallas February 2, 2010 Keeping a monopoly on yourself? Economists are trained to examine individual markets in order to determine whether or not those markets are functioning in an “economically efficient” manner. Economic efficiency, once achieved, requires that there be no way to increase the overall “surplus” – [...]