Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law October 10, 2013 Like many readers here, I made mix tapes back when I was in high school. I would put a blank cassette into my “boombox”; wait for a favorite song to play on the radio; and then record the song on tape. The result would be [...]
Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law September 24, 2013 As I mentioned in my last essay, my colleague Chris Cotropia and I have recently completed a data collection project in which we examined pleadings from approximately 1,000 copyright cases filed in federal court over a four-year period. We are still evaluating the [...]
Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California at Berkeley School of Law September 18, 2013 Two news items caught my eye in recent days, and I have been thinking about how they connect. Ray Dolby, the great sound engineer and entrepreneur, died.1 And I saw the latest in a string of ominous-sounding reports on the [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School September 11, 2013 This is a big and lively topic. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a recent interesting decision on the interface of copyright and legal pleadings (Unclaimed Property Recovery Service, Inc. v. Kaplan), and there is a new lawsuit over [...]
Prof. Rodney A. Smolla August 26, 2013 In Hart v. Electronic Arts, Inc.,1 a former Rutgers University football quarterback, Ryan Hart, brought suit against Electronic Arts, Inc., popularly known as EA Sports, for violating his right of publicity under New Jersey law. In analyzing Ryan’s common-law right of publicity claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals [...]
Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law August 20, 2013 What role does Big Media play in the courtroom? Major media companies are often portrayed as aggressive drivers of expansive copyright, dominating every aspect of the legal landscape. When it comes to litigation, however, the truth is more nuanced. My colleague Chris Cotropia [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law August 13, 2013 It’s the summer opera festival season, and I’m writing this column from the Glimmerglass Festival (the other major attraction of Cooperstown, N.Y.), so I thought a contribution on opera and copyright would be fun and topical. It turns out that operas set the [...]
Prof. Justin Hughes,* Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University August 5, 2013 On June 28, 2013, a new, quite extraordinary multilateral intellectual property treaty came into existence. The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for the Blind – the treaty’s full title is even longer – is the world’s only IP treaty dedicated [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School July 29, 2013 If you aren’t watching carefully, you are missing the ongoing skirmishes in the advertising tech wars. There is an important privacy front there, but today I want to focus on a different question, namely whether an advertiser can have any confidence that its [...]
Prof. Robert P. Merges, University of California at Berkeley School of Law July 22, 2013 Talk of trolls and patent reform is in the air. Many speak of a crisis, a sense that the center of the patent system is not holding. Reforms span a wide spectrum: While the Supreme Court reins in what it [...]