This essay, delivered as the Nies Lecture at Marquette Law School, focuses on changes in the doctrinal structure of trademark law over the course of the last century — specifically with respect to the relationship between trademark law's limits and the broader common law of unfair competition....

Mindful of the current trend within the United States to revive the focus on the use of trademark to determine a mark's ability as a source indicator, this paper highlights how focusing on use can create disparate results by examining the role of use when dealing with well-known marks. Hence,...

The doctrines of trademark genericism and functionality serve similar functions under the Lanham Act and the common law of unfair competition. Genericism, in the context of word marks, and functionality, for trade dress, bar trademark registration under the Lanham Act and, both under the Act and...

In a series of cases spanning more than one hundred years, courts and the US patent office have made clear that design patents are not to be justified by a fact that the newly invented ornamental design aids in distinguishing a company's product from those of its competitors. This article...

This is a forward to the issue of Chicago-Kent Law Review that focuses on intellectual property law. Several people commented on intellectual property from their own academic perspectives for the issue. Their responses developed along two themes - questioning the nature of the author’s claim...

This article investigates two particularly intriguing aspects of evolving theories of intellectual property. The first is how well new theories mesh with traditional theories. Externality theory from this decade recapitulates public goods theory from the 1980's. Misappropriation doctrine from...

Cet article examine dans quelle mesure le système du droit des marques tient compte de la liberté d'expression, en général, et le droit à la parodie, en particulier. L'étude analyse tout d'abord les dispositions légales et la jurisprudence relative à cette question dans le Benelux et la...

Using the passage of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA) as an exogenous shock to trademark protection, we find that stronger trademark protection induces firms to increase their CEO risk-taking incentives as measured by CEO portfolio vega. The effect is greater for firms facing more...

Despite the presence of a vigorous debate over the proper scope of trademark protection, scholars have largely ignored study of trademark law's origins. It would be a mistake, however, to ignore the history behind trademark law. Scrutiny of the formative era in American trademark law yields two...

The consumer search costs theory has dominated discussion of trademark law for the last several decades. According to this theory, trademark law aims to increase consumer welfare by reducing the cost of shopping for goods or services, and it accomplishes this goal by preventing uses of a...