8353 research outputs found
Sort by
Stop Glorifying Fashion Piracy: It is Time to Enact the Innovative Design Protection Act
Get PDFThe current low-IP regime in the United States fails to provide adequate protection for fashion designs. Multiple bills had been proposed in Congress to extend copyright protection to fashion designs, but none of these was passed. Proponents of the “Piracy Paradox” doctrine suggest that unregulated copying is paradoxically beneficial to fashion designers and can foster innovation. This paper shows that the doctrine reflects a clear misunderstanding of fashion theories and how fashion trends are formed. It further argues that the fashion industry requires a diverse portfolio of inspired works rather than line-by-line knockoffs to foster trend formation. The Innovative Design Protection Act is a well-thought-out bill that can maximize the welfare of fashion designers, copyists, and the public. Congress needs to extend limited sui generis copyright protection to fashion designs that can prohibit fashion piracy without interfering with the production of inspired works
A WRONG WITHOUT A REMEDY: LEAVING PARENTS AND CHILDREN WITH A HOLLOW VICTORY I NLAWSUITS AGAINST UNSCRUPULOUS SPERM BANKS
Get PDFLegal Age
No full textHow old are you? This deceptively simple question has a clear answer in the law, which is a number measuring the amount of time that has elapsed since birth. However, as scientists discover various biomarkers of human aging and individuals openly embrace more fluid identities, this chronological definition will soon have to compete with biological and subjective alternatives. Legal scholars have previously examined the role of age in the legal system, but they have done so assuming a chronological definition. This is the first Article to examine critically the antecedent question of how we should define legal age after one has reached adulthood. The stakes for this definition are high. Age is ubiquitous in the legal landscape, appearing in the Constitution, antidiscrimination statutes, criminal laws, and public benefits programs. This Article normatively assesses the chronological, biological, and subjective conceptions of age, examining how well they improve the accuracy of the legal system, impact administrative costs, promote autonomy interests, and further antisubordination goals. It then charts three potential paths forward for legal age: abolishing age as a meaningful legal category for adults, particularizing the definition of legal age based on context, and reforming the chronological status quo through the calibration of existing age-based law
COVID-19 and Contracts: At What Point Does Performance Become Excused in Light of a Pandemic under Force Majeure?
Get PDF
Vol. 39, No 1
Get PDFThe Impact of the Pandemic on State and Local Government Budgets
By Beverly S. Bunch
Recent Developmentshttps://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/iperr/1124/thumbnail.jp
Unravelling Inventorship
Get PDFInventorship, who made an invention, is one of the most important concepts under the U.S. patent system. Incorrect inventorship determinations result in patent invalidity not only because U.S. Constitution requires granting patents to true inventors, but also first-inventor- to-file novelty inherited many aspects of first-to-invent novelty which depended on inventorship whether to include prior inventions as prior art. Correcting inventorship may result in sharing patent exclusivity with competitors, which forfeits profits necessary to recover expensive development costs. However, the standard to determine inventorship has been called muddy by judges and commentators because neither the Patent Act nor case law provide any clear guidance. The standard has become overinclusive to overcome obstacles to obtaining patents when inventors work jointly on the same research project because the first-to-invent system included prior inventions as prior art even if they were kept secret (secret prior art), unless the same inventorship exception enabled inventors to remove the prior art. To address the obstacles, Congress has introduced multiple exceptions, which have resulted in an unnecessarily complex legal framework. Under the current standard, any researchers who are willing to exchange research results and ideas are subjected to the risk of a joint inventorship dispute. This article proposes a reform to remove the obstacles which America Invents Act (AIA) was unable to address. It proposes the adoption of a simplified legal framework which would remove secret prior art and prior art during the grace period from obviousness determinations, regardless of inventorship. By eliminating any necessity for the overinclusive inventorship standard, this article proposes an improved inventorship standard to include only inventors who collectively made inventive contributions by revitalizing the collaboration requirement and inventive nature requirement for contributions
A Social Theory of Legal Precedent (forthcoming)
No full textWhy do judges commonly predicate their own decisions on earlier decisions authored by others? What makes those otherwise discrete and separate decisions of the past nonetheless hang together and form a powerful system of reference to subsequent cases? While legal justification for legal precedent remains remarkably limited, a leading account attributes this ostensibly puzzling authority to its efficiency-enhancing properties. However, conservation of judicial resources can hardly motivate judges to abide by past decisions. Moreover, the consequentialist nature of the rationalist explanation tends to exaggerate the predictive force of legal precedent. No legal precedent guarantees a particular court ruling, while an overarching logic of judicial efficiency might allude in such direction. In an effort to fill such analytical gap, this Article reconstructs legal precedent as a socio-anthropological phenomenon, i.e., “ritual.” The central claim of this Article is twofold. First, legal precedent is explicable in cultural terms, such as symbol and language; second, legal precedent holds a structural-systematic value as it exists for its own sake. This novel approach to legal precedent, this Article argues, can enrich mindsets of legal scholars and practitioners and help them expand their discursive horizons, so as to produce globally relevant decisions. This Article applies the new framework to the jurisprudence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to reconfigure the boundaries of legal precedent in a global dimension