Prof. Stan Liebowitz, University of Texas at Dallas Sept. 1, 2009 Two pieces of copyright legislation have been floating around Congress during the last two years that are diametrically opposed to each other.  One is the “Performance Rights Act” and the other is the obscurely named “Local Radio Freedom Act.” The purpose of the first [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* Aug. 14, 2009 The recent controversy over the publication of a new, and altered, edition of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of his early days in Paris, A Moveable Feast (see, e.g., the New York Times account), inspires this exploration of the legal consequences of an heir’s reworking [...]

Prof. Robert P. Merges, Boalt Hall School of Law, UC-Berkeley Aug. 6, 2009 In the IP world, and in law generally, commonly accepted non-legal social norms have been the focus of intense interest in recent years.  Much of the attention has focused on the interaction between norms and formal law.  Some scholars have been interested [...]

Prof. Jim Gibson, University of Richmond July 29, 2009 In this “IP Viewpoints” post, I hope to combine two Uncontroversial Premises to reach a Counterintuitive Conclusion about the role that intellectual property can play in the regulation of innovation. First Uncontroversial Premise: IP is a useful tool for creating incentives to innovate, but too much [...]

Prof. Peter S. Menell, School of Law, University of California at Berkeley Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology July 24, 2009 Following the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision four years ago, Professor Lawrence Lessig predicted that the decision would gravely hamper innovation in digital technology.  See Robert Hof, “Ten Years of Chilled Innovation,” Business Week [...]

Prof. Justin Hughes, Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University July 20, 2009 [This is the third and final essay in a series about copyright in the 2008 presidential campaign.] In the first two essays of “Election Copyright” we considered musicians trying to use copyright to protect their reputational and “personality” interests, then how the originality [...]

Prof. Douglas Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 25, 2009 Ten years ago, a meaningful discussion of copyright law could focus almost exclusively on the federal copyright statute and its related case law.  At that time, the primary powers wielded by copyright holders were rights granted explicitly by the statute, such as the exclusive right [...]

Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School June 18, 2009 Google is a company of modest ambitions. As it puts it in its brief corporate statement, Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Organize it, put it online, display it, and make a few [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* June 11, 2009 Rob Merges’s recent (May 26) contribution on “Intellectual Property and the Culture of Giving” inspires this follow-up. Rob evoked “the right (and wrong) way to give [rights] away.” I would like to consider further whether public licenses for works other than software, such [...]

Prof. Robert P. Merges, Boalt Hall School of Law, UC-Berkeley May 26, 2009 The current literature on IP rights is full of contrasts.  On one side are the champions of the digital revolution, who argue that traditional IP rights are generally unsuited to the new world of digital content.  They claim that the inherited structure [...]