The recent Supreme Court battle over the legal standard for permanent injunctions in patents cases (eBay v. MercExchange) marked an important new front in the Property Rights Movement's campaign to establish a strict and broad interpretation of property rights and their enforcement. This essay...

This essay argues that, rather than being a constitutional bulwark against environmental regulation, certain kinds of property rights can actually ease constitutional barriers created by current Supreme Court doctrine. These environmental property rights (EPRs) are either rights to prevent...

The Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange brought into focus whether intellectual property policy should follow reflexively in the wake of tangible property doctrines or instead look to the distinctive market failures and institutional features of intellectual resources. Professor...

Four decades ago, the Ninth Circuit ruled that expert testimony was inadmissible to determine whether Mayor McCheese and the merry band of McDonaldland characters infringed copyright protection for Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo and the other imaginative H.R. Pufnstuf costumed characters. Since the...

The scenes a faire doctrine, which recognizes elements of a work that are stock, rudimentary, or that arise naturally from a particular theme or setting, is a flexible and capacious limitation on copyright protection that can shield defendants from copyright liability. There are at least five...

For a century, Congress has sought to protect authors and their families by allowing them to grant their copyrights for exploitation and then, decades later, recapture those same rights. After judicial interpretation of the 1909 Act frustrated this intent, Congress spoke unambiguously in 1976:...

This article explores how 3D printing fits within US copyright law. US copyright law provides a well-developed general framework for the protection of creative designs, whether fixed in CAD files or 3D objects. Enforcement of copyright protection in this industry faces some of the same...

In conjunction with Congressional review of copyright law in light of technological and other developments that affect the creation, dissemination, and use of copyrighted works, the U.S. Copyright Office announced on March 17, 2014 the initiation of a study to evaluate the effectiveness of...

This commentary discusses the U.S. Copyright Office's May 5, 2014 hearing on the scope of the Section 106(3) distribution right, including the role of legislative history in interpreting this provision of copyright law. Following hearings before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual...