Not all secrets held by a business can be legally protected as trade secrets. Yet the boundaries of trade-secret-protectable subject matter have never been well explained. Limitations are implicitly recognized by courts, but the principles upon which these limitations are based are largely...

Intellectual property law assumes that people need monetary incentives to create; to this end, it enables the formation of markets for intellectual works. Remarkably, however, sharing — i.e., socially mediated gifting without any expectation of payment — may work much better than markets for...

The patent system could better achieve its primary mission of incentivizing technological innovation by moving away from the one-size-fits-all 20-year term for patents and moving to a system of varying durations for different categories of invention. The current patent duration is arbitrary, the...

A new kind of copyright licensing scheme could significantly enhance the ability of ordinary citizens to make their own films, television shows, magazines, radio programs, and other media creations. Thanks to recent leaps in computer technology and electronics, regular folks now have the means...

Many states have asserted copyright over their own official state legal texts, limiting access to those materials and attempting to monetize them. This Article aims to provide helpful analysis for state officials deciding whether to pursue such policies and for courts reviewing challenges to...

On January 19-20, 2023 at Stanford University, the Stanford Interdisciplinary Working Group on Interoperability met to discuss the future of interoperability and whether there were ways to make progress towards the goal of facilitating competition and access across platforms. The group, which...

The enterprise of intellectual property law has long been based on the premise that external incentives – such as copyrights and patents – are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations. This article argues that this foundational belief is wrong. Using...