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Beth Webb - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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LibGuides. Copyright. Patent, Copyright andTrademark.
2015Co-Authors: Beth WebbAbstract:The Copyright Act creates rights in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression.
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LibGuides. Copyright. Home.
2015Co-Authors: Beth WebbAbstract:The Copyright Act creates rights in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression.
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LibGuides. Copyright. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
2015Co-Authors: Beth WebbAbstract:The Copyright Act creates rights in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression.
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LibGuides. Copyright. Fair Use.
2015Co-Authors: Beth WebbAbstract:The Copyright Act creates rights in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression.
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LibGuides. Copyright. Copyright for Faculty.
2015Co-Authors: Beth WebbAbstract:The Copyright Act creates rights in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression.
Bennett T. Mccallum - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Present and Future of Monetary Policy Rules
2000Co-Authors: Bennett T. MccallumAbstract:To consider the prospects, looking 20-30 years into the future, for monetary policymaking in accordance with policy rules, one must evaluate their present importance. That requires some definition of what constitutes rule-based monetary policy in practice, since no actual central bank will ever be literally bound by any simple formula (or any strict optimal control scheme). Consideration of the rules-versus-discretion literature, plus more recent analysis by Woodford (1999), indicates that rule-based policy is conducted to satisfy relationships specified from a timeless perspective.' Given this conception, it seems reasonably clear that today's prominent regimes (e.g., inflation targeting) do largely represent rule-based policymaking. Whether these will prevail into the future will depend in part on political trends, but their fundamental soundness gives room for hope. Regarding the effects of a gradually diminishing role of money, it would appear that the feasibility and attractiveness of rule-based policymaking will not be seriously impaired so long as a Tangible Medium of exchange has some importance, even if small. In the complete absence of monetary transactions, there would be no monetary policy of any type, rule-based or discretionary. But it seems highly unlikely that money will disappear in the foreseeable future.
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The Present and Future of Monetary Policy Rules
International Finance, 2000Co-Authors: Bennett T. MccallumAbstract:To consider the prospects, looking 20-30 years into the future, for monetary policymaking in accordance with policy rules, one must evaluate their present importance. That requires some definition of what constitutes rule-based monetary policy in practice, since no actual central bank will ever be literally bound by any simple formula (or any strict optimal control scheme). Consideration of the rules-versus-discretion literature, plus more recent analysis by Woodford (1999), indicates that rule-based policy is conducted to satisfy relationships specified from a timeless perspective.' Given this conception, it seems reasonably clear that today's prominent regimes (e.g., inflation targeting) do largely represent rule-based policymaking. Whether these will prevail into the future will depend in part on political trends, but their fundamental soundness gives room for hope. Regarding the effects of a gradually diminishing role of money, it would appear that the feasibility and attractiveness of rule-based policymaking will not be seriously impaired so long as a Tangible Medium of exchange has some importance, even if small. In the complete absence of monetary transactions, there would be no monetary policy of any type, rule-based or discretionary. But it seems highly unlikely that money will disappear in the foreseeable future.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Pamela Samuelson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Notice Failures Arising from Copyright Duration Rules
Boston University Law Review, 2016Co-Authors: Pamela SamuelsonAbstract:IntroductionFor the first 188 years of U.S. history, copyright terms were measured by a set term of years, dating from the work's first registration or publication, and were renewable for another set term if the owner of the rights complied with the formalities necessary to accomplish this.1 Because the law required owners to give notice of their claims of copyright on published copies of their works,2 it was possible to know with reasonable certainty when those copyrights would expire, as well as when the work was published and who claimed to own those rights.3 Because most copyright owners did not renew their copyrights, the overwhelming majority of published works went into the public domain within a few decades.4Since 1978, copyright terms for individual authors have commenced at the moment of first fixation of their works in a Tangible Medium and lasted for the authors' lives plus fifty (now seventy) years.5 Since 1989, copyright owners have been relieved of the obligation to put notices on published copies of their works.6 Because the life-plus model was not applied retroactively, it is still possible, barring future copyright term extensions, to know when pre-1978 works will enter the public domain because those works remain subject to set terms.7 Works for hire, along with anonymous and pseudonymous works, also have set terms, although these terms are now so long-ninety-five years from publication or 120 years from creation8-that, practically speaking, they might as well be infinite.9Congress had its reasons for making these changes to copyright duration and notice rules in 1976 and 1989, but it gave little thought to the costs that these changes would impose on future creators and prospective users.10 Since then, it has become apparent that the combination of lengthened copyright terms and lessened incentives to use copyright notices has produced some significant notice failures.11 Many who want to license uses of protected works encounter difficulties in finding out who owns what rights (if any) in which works, how long those rights will last, and on what terms licenses may be available.12 Cultural heritage institutions, such as libraries, archives, and museums, are often inhibited from making some socially valuable uses of works in their collections because of copyright restrictions.13 Many of these works have little or no commercial value; yet they may have historical or cultural heritage significance and may be valued by scholars and other researchers.14 If copyright is to achieve its constitutional purpose of "promoting] the progress of science,"15 solutions need to be found to overcome the notice failures that Congress created with changes to duration and notice rules.Part I of this Article discusses the societal benefits of the pre-1978 copyright duration and notice regime. This era was not without some notice problems, but by comparison with the present copyright regime, it was a notice-friendly system.16 Part II considers reasons for the shift to the life-plus model, along with one long set term for works for hire, to replace the renewable term model. There was some awareness that the life-plus model would pose notice difficulties, but those difficulties were underappreciated.17 Part III offers numerous suggestions for how to overcome the notice problems that now beset copyright arising from its duration regime.I. The Pre-1978 Notice-Friendly Copyright Duration RulesFor almost two hundred years, U.S. copyright law measured the duration of exclusive rights granted to authors based on a set period of years (assuming compliance with notice formalities), which could be extended for another set number of years (by complying with a formality in the last year of the first term).18 Renewal was initially dependent on the author being alive in the last year of the first copyright term, but in 1831, Congress allowed surviving spouses to renew in the final year of the first term. …
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Why Copyright Law Excludes Systems and Processes from the Scope of Its Protection
Texas Law Review, 2006Co-Authors: Pamela SamuelsonAbstract:Section 102 is one of the few elegant and concise provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 (1976 Act).1 Section 102(a) sets forth the subject matter eligible for copyright protection. "Copyright protection subsists," it says, "in original works of authorship fixed in any Tangible Medium of expression . . . ."2 Nicely complementing this provision is its statutory cousin, § 102(b), which provides: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."3 Once a work qualifies for copyright protection under § 102(a), § 102(b) informs its author and the rest of the world about certain aspects of the work that are not within the scope of copyright protection. Surprisingly few cases and very little commentary have probed the meaning of § 102(b), and in particular, of the eight words of exclusion it contains.4 Most often, courts and commentators have characterized § 102(b) as a codification of the so-called idea/expression dichotomy, that is, the longstanding copyright principle that this law protects authors against illicit appropriations of expressive aspects of their works, although not of the ideas the works contain.5 This Article will call this the "idea/expression distinction."6 Others have described § 102(b) as a codification of the Supreme Court's 1880 decision in Baker v. Seiden} which held that systems or methods of bookkeeping were beyond the scope of copyright protection in a book describing or explaining the system, and of Baker's progeny. Treatise author Paul Goldstein has suggested that both "idea" and "expression" should be understood as metaphors for aspects of protected works that either are, or are not, within the scope of copyright protection.8 That is, idea is a metaphor for that which is unprotectable by copyright law, including but not limited to abstract ideas, and expression is a metaphor for that which is within the scope of copyright protection, even when the exact words of a text, notes of a musical score, or lines of a drawing have not been appropriated.9 While this metaphorical approach has some appeal, it has two disadvantages: first, the metaphor of idea may be too powerful, causing it to be construed too narrowly, as Professor Melville Nimmer, the now-deceased author of a widely cited treatise on copyright law, has done;10 and second, it distracts readers from paying attention to the other seven words of exclusion in § 102(b) and to policy reasons that support excluding more than just abstract ideas from copyright protection. This Article argues that all eight words of exclusion were put in the statute for a sound reason and that those who read the other seven words out of the statute are mistaken. To be more consistent with § 102(b), courts would be well advised to speak of the "protectable/unprotectable distinction" in copyright law.11 Part I begins by demonstrating that the Supreme Court's decision in Baker did not, as has often been asserted, originate the distinction between ideas and their expressions. Baker's principal holding was that complex intellectual creations in the useful arts, such as bookkeeping systems and methods of operation, are beyond the scope of copyright protection in any work describing or otherwise depicting them. Baker's progeny understood, applied, and extended this holding, as well as offered rationales for limiting the scope of copyright in this way. Baker and its progeny constitute the principal case law foundations for the system, method, and process exclusions embedded in § 102(b). Part II explores the legislative history that led to the inclusion of § 102(b) in the copyright revision bills and ultimately in the 1976 Act. Several witnesses spoke strongly of the need for a statutory delimitation on the scope of copyright if Congress adopted the broad new subject matter provision, now codified as § 102(a), especially insofar as it would extend copyright protection to computer programs. …
David Fagundes - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Costly Intellectual Property
Vanderbilt Law Review, 2012Co-Authors: Jonathan S. Masur, David FagundesAbstract:Though they derive from the same constitutional source of law, patents and copyrights vest very differently. Patents arise only after an applicant successfully navigates a cumbersome and expensive examination, while copyrights arise costlessly upon mere fixation of a work in a Tangible Medium of expression. Each of these vesting systems has drawn much criticism. Some scholars argue that the patent examination system imposes heavy costs while failing to eliminate invalid patents. Each of these claims, though, fails to take into account the social benefits (or costs) associated with the screening mechanism (or lack thereof) required for owners to perfect their rights. The social welfare implications of process costs have been studied in other settings, but largely ignored in the intellectual property literature. In this Article, we leverage the insights of the process costs literature to craft a novel theory showing why the much-maligned patent and copyright vesting systems are actually socially beneficial. Our analysis rests on a descriptive account of how patents and copyrights create differential social and private values, and shows that costly screens select differently across the classes of value in each of these cases, so that process costs are warranted in the patent setting but undesirable for copyright. Finally, we abstract the insights of this Article to generate two more general insights about law. First, we illustrate how this analysis of costly screens generates a broader account of how law does and should govern processes for vesting IP rights. In so doing, we offer a novel and unified theory of IP process. Second, we explore how our discussion of process costs in the IP setting illuminates the underappreciated benefits and costs of screens in other areas of law. INTRODUCTION 678 I. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF COSTLY SCREENS 681 II. COSTLY PATENTS 685 A. Patent Costs 686 B. Low Barriers and Private /Public Asymmetries ...... 692 1. High Private Value/High Social Value Patents 694 2. High Private Value/Low Social Value Patents 695 3. Low Private Value/Low Social Value Patents 696 4. Low Private Value/High Social Value Patents 700 III. COSTLY COPYRIGHTS 705 A. Copyright Costs 706 B. Copyright Screens and Public /Private Asymmetries 709 1. High Private Value/High Social Value Copyrights 711 2. High Private Value/Low Social Value Copyrights 712 3. Low Private Value/Low Social Value Copyrights 716 4. Low Private Value/High Social Value Copyrights 720 IV. COSTLY SCREENS IN BROADER CONTEXT 726 A. A Unified Theory of IP Process 726 B. Process Costs and Cognate Fields 729 1 . Beneficially Costly Law Systems 729 2. Beneficially Costless Law Systems 732 CONCLUSION 734 INTRODUCTION Patents and copyrights originate from the same constitutional source of law,1 and for this reason they are in some respects similar. …
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Costly Intellectual Property
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012Co-Authors: Jonathan S. Masur, David FagundesAbstract:Though they derive from the same constitutional source of law, patents and copyrights vest very differently. Patents arise only after an applicant successfully navigates a cumbersome and expensive examination, while copyrights arise costlessly upon mere fixation of a work in a Tangible Medium of expression. Each of these vesting systems has drawn much criticism. Some scholars argue that the patent examination system imposes heavy costs while failing to eliminate invalid patents. Each of these claims, though, fails to take into account the social benefits (or costs) associated with the screening mechanism (or lack thereof) required for owners to perfect their rights. The social-welfare implications of process costs have been studied in other settings, but largely ignored in the intellectual property (IP) literature. In this Article, we leverage the insights of this literature to craft a novel theory showing why the much-maligned patent and copyright vesting systems are actually socially beneficial. Our analysis rests on a descriptive account of how patents and copyrights create differential social and private values, and shows that costly screens select differently across the classes of value in each of these cases, so that process costs are warranted in the patent setting but undesirable for copyright. Finally, we abstract the insights of this paper to generate two more general insights about law. First, we illustrate how this analysis of costly screens generates a broader account of how law does and should govern processes for vesting IP rights. In so doing, we offer a novel and unified theory of IP process. Second, we explore how our discussion of process costs in the IP setting illuminates the underappreciated benefits and costs of screens in other areas of law.
Sanna Wolk - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Software Business in Transit – Will Exhaustion and Defining Sale or License Soon Be Irrelevant?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014Co-Authors: Sanna WolkAbstract:Consumption of copyright-protected works, such as software, games, music, video, television broadcasts and newspapers has reshaped in the digital environment. The development of Internet and online distribution has, at least within the European Union (EU), set the traditional principle of exhaustion aside when software is delivered online. The Court of Justice of the European Union has held in UsedSoft v. Oracle (2011) that, under certain conditions, a licensed computer program downloaded from the Internet shall be considered to be sold and exhausts the rightholder’s distribution right. This means that the rightholder cannot prevent the buyer to resell a copy of a computer program bought online, which is the same situation when software is sold as a hard copy. Meanwhile in the United States (US) the Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit has held in MDY v. Blizzard (2010) that online software should be considered licensed and not sold. Furthermore, in the US the situation is the same when software is distributed on a Tangible Medium according to the Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in Vernor v. Autodesk (2010). Consequently the starting point in the US is different than in the EU regarding the concept of exhaustion, both with respect to digitally delivered software and software delivered on Tangible media.
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The software business in transit : Will exhaustion and defining sale or licence soon be irrelevant?
2014Co-Authors: Sanna WolkAbstract:Consumption of copyright-protected works, such as software, games, music, video, television broadcasts and newspapers has reshaped in the digital environment. The development of Internet and online distribution has, at least within the European Union (EU), set the traditional principle of exhaustion aside when software is delivered online. The Court of Justice of the European Union has held in UsedSoft v. Oracle (2011) that, under certain conditions, a licensed computer program downloaded from the Internet shall be considered to be sold and exhausts the rightholder’s distribution right. This means that the rightholder cannot prevent the buyer to resell a copy of a computer program bought online, which is the same situation when software is sold as a hard copy. Meanwhile in the United States (US) the Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit has held in MDY v. Blizzard (2010) that online software should be considered licensed and not sold. Furthermore, in the US the situation is the same when software is distributed on a Tangible Medium according to the Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in Vernor v. Autodesk (2010). Consequently the starting point in the US is different than in the EU regarding the concept of exhaustion, both with respect to digitally delivered software and software delivered on Tangible media.
