Mississippi College School of Law
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The Social Value of Intellectual Property
Get PDFThe focus of this paper is not on how intellectual property owners can misuse intellectual property rights in harmful ways in society. Much has already been written about that topic. Instead, this paper is about how to encourage intellectual property owners, especially corporate owners, to make decisions and implement strategies about their intellectual property rights that are socially valuable and positively impactful. This paper argues that if corporate and business owners of intellectual property understand the role that their intellectual property rights can have in creating a positive social impact, the influence that they can have in the market as a result, and what that means for their business, they would pay more attention to how their use of intellectual property impacts society and the planet. This essay unfolds in three parts. Part I is normative and argues that companies and businesses should care about the impact their decisions and business practices around intellectual property have on society because their purpose, as a business, extends beyond shareholder wealth maximization. Businesses need to also care about the impact they have on society and the planet. Part II is prescriptive and discusses how the legal system can create the right conditions that make it economically efficient for businesses and companies to decide to do good with their intellectual property rights and create an impact that benefits their communities and stakeholders. This paper argues the law should create conditions that enable and empower companies to make positive uses of their intellectual property above incentivizing or punishing specific behaviors. Part III lays out the practical steps legal systems can take to allow companies and businesses to make socially valuable business decisions in how intellectual property rights are used and implement them more easily. This paper concludes with the idea that socially valuable intellectual property has a more direct impact on patents and copyright\u27s constitutional purpose of promoting progress
AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN—THE TIMELESS PLEA FOR NOLLAN/DOLAN EXTENSION TO THE SPHERE OF LEGISLATIVE EXACTIONS
Get PDF“. . . [W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people . . . they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience . . . .”1
In 1772, the colonists of Weare, New Hampshire, were given a choice: cede all white pine trees grown on their lands to the King of England or pay a hefty fine. It was an odious decree—one that struck at the very ideal of the American colonies. Imbued as they were with a sense of divine right to property, the colonists refused, taking up arms to lead a gallant revolt. In a burst of righteous fury, they sheared the King’s horses, flogged his enforcement officials, and paraded both through the streets and out of town. Known as the “Pine Tree Riots,” these events bled into the American Revolution and became immortalized in the “Appeal to Heaven Flag”—an enduring if little known tribute to liberty, natural rights, and the American spirit. Their staunch Lockean convictions matched only by their fervor for freedom, the early colonists were unwilling to yield even a stick of pine to the throes of regulatory tyranny.
With events like those in Weare County no doubt in the back of mind, the drafters of our Constitution were determined to forge a protection against government overreach. They did so with the Fifth Amendment’s “Takings” Clause, which guarantees that private property shall not be taken except for public use—and not without just compensation. As tyrannical tree taxes faded in the rearview mirror, Fifth-Amendment Takings doctrine appeared poised to protect landowners from abuse, and takings jurisprudence was able to keep pace with increasingly inventive governmental attempts to “take” property.
But in the two-hundred and fifty years since the Pine Tree Riots, the nemesis of the property owner has become, not the tyrant across the sea, but the tyrant in city hall. The enforcement of modern exactions has placed modern landowners in a position little-better than their eighteenth-century counterparts; as city planners find more ways to take property from landowners, the need to evolve commensurate protections for private- property rights has grown desperate. Two seminal Supreme Court cases, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 371 (1994), have provided a test that would do much to solve this problem, but a refusal to extend them has left property owners helpless to respond against municipal encroachment. The situation is dire: if property owners are to be protected, Fifth Amendment takings jurisprudence must adapt.
In response, this Article proceeds in seven parts to plead for an extension of Nollan/Dolan protections to the sphere of legislative exactions: a solution that would benefit cities and property owners alike. Such a move would give cities the clarification they need to craft proper regulatory measures; at the same time, it would protect property owners by ensuring that valid ordinances do not overstep their authority. A refusal to extend, however, will prevent landowner protections from keeping pace with the steady march of regulatory creep—leaving the modern landowner hardly better off than those New Hampshire colonists forced to surrender their white pines over two centuries ago
THE INTERSECTION OF THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING: A LEGALIZED LABOR OF INJUSTICE
Get PDFIn order to provide a critical analysis of the structural barriers to justice faced by trafficking victims, this Comment will explore the legal framework of trafficking in the United States since 2000, discuss how that framework perpetuates trafficking, review the existing remedies available to trafficking survivors, and analyze whether the existing remedies accomplish their purported goals. Part II of this Comment details the legal framework of human trafficking, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and its progeny, as well as relevant case law interpreting the Act’s statutory language. Part III analytically explores how trafficking is perpetrated through temporary work visas. This includes an examination of the T Visa program, asking whether it accomplishes its purported goals; a discussion on the elements of the T Visa and the benefits and drawbacks of the program; and a detailed analysis of the detention and deportation of trafficking victims—walking through the process of removal and how it specifically traumatizes them. After walking through each stage of the immigration process—from recruitment to removal—the need to provide survivor-centered immigration policy and protections will become increasingly clear
