May a dominant firm refuse to share its intellectual property (IP) with its rivals? This question lies at the heart of a highly divisive, international debate concerning the proper application of the antitrust laws. In this short Essay, we consider a profound, yet previously unaddressed, incongruity underlying the controversy. Specifically,… Read More »
Your Internet is missing something.
In India, it’s pornography. In China, it’s political dissent; in France, white supremacist sites; in America, copyrighted material. Countries worldwide are using a combination of legal rules and technological tools to make targeted information disappear from their citizens’ view of cyberspace. This strategy, known as… Read More »
In 2006, thousands of soccer fans showed up to the World Cup game between the Netherlands and the Ivory Coast wearing pants in the colors of the Dutch national team. The pants had been given out as promotional gifts by a beer company. FIFA, the governing body of international soccer,… Read More »
I.
The Conceptual Counteroffensive Against Private Property
This basic theory of property rights identifies three central components of private ownership: the rights to possess, use, and dispose of property. Taken together, these elements facilitate the creation of complex voluntary arrangements to coordinate the activities of multiple actors. The operational… Read More »
About half, probably more, of all patented inventions in the United States are never commercially exploited. Many of these undeveloped inventions are commercially worthless ab initio, such as the anti-eating face mask, beer bottle mini-umbrella, and weed-cutting golf club.
Yet, for several reasons, the patent “underdevelopment” problem arguably applies to… Read More »
This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Jeanne C. Fromer: Claiming Intellectual Property.
Claiming intellectual property is an act of communication, but as with all communication not everything can be spelled out with exactitude all the time—far from it. By drawing out an additional distinction between… Read More »
By writing a series of James Bond novels, Ian Fleming qualified for American copyright protection, pursuant to which works created by others without license and found by courts to be substantially similar to the novels would generally infringe his copyright. Imagine instead that Fleming would have had to draft a… Read More »
Trade secret law is a puzzle. No one can seem to agree where trade secret law comes from or how to fit it into the broader framework of legal doctrine. Courts, lawyers, scholars, and treatise writers argue over whether trade secrets are a creature of contract, of tort, of property,… Read More »
Why did it take decades from the time inventors first developed wheeled suitcases before they were put on the market? Why haven’t the courts concluded that trademarks like “Band-Aid” and “Rollerblade” are now generic? Why did many analysts doubt the business wisdom of launching Netflix even after customer subscriptions exceeded… Read More »
Below is a brief introduction to the Legal Workshop project. We hope you enjoy getting to know us, and we welcome your feedback.
Mission:
The Legal Workshop website provides a single online forum for cutting-edge legal scholarship from the top law journals in the country.
The Legal Workshop features… Read More »
