Foundations of Intellectual Property- January 2017

Prof. Hiram A. Meléndez-Juarbe

With emphasis on Copyright Law, the course explores theoretical and policy foundations of major intellectual property doctrines. From an interdisciplinary standpoint we will look at theories of property, innovation policy, economic analysis as well as social and political theory as they inform current intellectual property law. In the end, the course will explore how multiple justifications coming from different methodological strands intersect to influence the law. As a theoretical exercise, the course does not attempt to replace basic intellectual property courses. Rather, the objective is to help students develop a general understanding of the field from a theoretical perspective.

Click this Link to download the Syllabus for Group Assignment, Schedules and other important information.

Session 1: Introduction, 3 Jan

  • Lemley, Mark A., IP in a World Without Scarcity (March 24, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2413974
  • Deven R. Desai, The New Steam: On Digitization, Decentralization, and Disruption (August 1, 2014). Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 65, No. 6, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2508712
  • Kenneth Einar Himma, Information and the Limits of Unlimited Supply (October 13, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2509175 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2509175

RECOMMENDED

  • Seana Shiffrin, Intellecutual Property, in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (edited by Robert Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, Blackwell, 2007).
  • Jeanne Frommer, Expressive Incentives in Intellectual Property, 98 VIRGINIA L REV 1745 (2012)
  • David H. Blankfein-Tabachnick, Intellectual Property Doctrine and Midlevel Principles, 101 Cal L. Rev. 1315 (2013)
  • Robert Merges, Foundations and Principles Redux: A Reply to Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick 101 Cal L. Rev. 1361 (2013)
  • Madison, Michael J., (Draft) IP Things as Boundary Objects: The Case of the Copyright Work (March 31, 2013). U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2013-12.

Session 2: Property Paradigm 1: Locke and Friends, 4 Jan

  • John Locke, The Second Treatise Of Civil Government (1690) as edited in Robert Merges & Jane Ginsburg, Foundations of Intellectual Property, Foundation Press 2004.
  • Justin Hughes, The Philosophy of Intellectual Property, 77 GEO. L. J 287 (1998) (pages 296-330)
  • Robert Merges, Locke for the Masses: Property Rights and the Products of Collective Creativity (January 5, 2009) 
  • Robert Merges, Locke Remixed ; – ), UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 40, p. 101, 2007. 
  • William Fisher III, Theories of Intellectual Property, at Munzer (Ed.), New Essays In Legal And Political Theory Of Property 168 (2001) (pages 184-89)
  • Seana Shiffrin, Lockean Arguments for Private Intellectual Property at Munzer (Ed.), New Essays In Legal And Political Theory Of Property (2001) (only parts II and III: “Lockean Arguments for Private Property” and “A Lockean Approach to Intellectual Property”, PDF pages 6-21).

RECOMMENDED

  • Nozick, Anarchy State and Utopia (1974) (pages 174-182 )
  • Daniel Attas, Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property, in Axel Gorsseries, Alain Marciano and Alain Strowel, Intellectual Property And Theories Of Justice 29 (2008)

Session 3: Property Paradigm 2: Personality Rights, Malleability and Disobedience, 5 Jan

  • Justin Hughes, The Philosophy of Intellectual Property, 77 GEO. L. J 287 (1998) (pages 330-350)
  • Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Inspiration and Innovation: The Intrinsic Dimension of the Artistic Soul, 81 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1945 (2006) (pages 1962-1975)
  • Peter K Yu, Moral Rights 2.0 (October 15, 2010). LANDMARK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CASES AND THEIR LEGACY, pp. 13-32
  • Peñalver & Katyal, Property Outlaws 155 U Penn Law Rev 1095 (2007) (1128-1140)
  • John Tehranian, Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap, Utah Law Review 537 (2007).

RECOMMENDED:

(a) Moral Rights and Authorship

  • William Fisher III, Theories of Intellectual Property, at Munzer (Ed.), New Essays In Legal And Political Theory Of Property 168 (2001) (pages 189-92)
  • Cyrill P. Rigamonti, Deconstructing Moral Rights, 47 Harv. Int’l L.J. 353 (2006).
  • Carol M.Rose, Canons of Property Talk, or, Blackstone’s Anxiety, 108 YALE L.J. 601, 622 (1998).

(b) Malleability

  • Richard Stallman, Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing
  • Pierre Bourdieu, The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field, 38 Hst. L. J. 805 (1987) (pages 831-39)
  • Jeremy Waldron, From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property, 68 CHI. KENT. L. REV. 841 (1993) (pages 841-46, 862-68)
  • Carol Rose, Seeing property, in Property and Persuasion (1994) (pages 285-294)
  • Peter Jaszi, Is There Such a Thing as Postmodern Copyright?, 12 Tul. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 105 (2009)

(c) Disobedience

  • Leslie Green, Legal Obligation and Authority, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/legal-obligation/

Session 4: Incentives Paradigm 1: Utilitarianism, Welfarism and Consequentialism, 6 Jan 

  • Michael Abramowicz, A Theory of Copyright’s Derivative Right and Related Doctrines, 90 Minn. L. Rev. 317, 325-326; 342-357 (2005)
  • Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 1569 (2009) (Part IV, skim Intro)
  • David McGowan, Copyright Nonconsequentialism, 69 Mo. L. Rev. 1 (2004) (1-16; 28-36)

RECOMMENDED:

  • Amartya Sen, Utilitarianism and Welfarism, 76 J. OF PHIL. 463-89 (1979).
  • Seana Shiffrin, The Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Protection in Axel Gorsseries, Alain Marciano and Alain Strowel, Intellectual Property And Theories Of Justice (2008).
  • Glynn S. Lunney, Empirical Copyright: A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output (December 28, 2013)
  • Michele Boldrin and David Levine, Does Intellectual Property help Innovation?, 5 Review of Law and Economics 991 (2009)
  • Andreas Rahmatian, A Fundamental Critique of the Law-and-Economics Analysis of Intellectual Property Rights (May 30, 2013). International Intellectual Property Scholars Series, 17 Marquette Intellectual Property L. Rev. 191 (2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2388136

Session 5: Incentives Paradigm 2: Private Ordering and Spillovers, 9 Jan

  • James Gibson, Risk Aversion and Rights Accretion in Intellectual Property Law, 116 Yale L.J. 882 (2007) (882-905)
  • Robert P. Merges, Contracting Into Liability Rules: Intellectual Property Rights and Collective Rights Organizations, 84 Cal. L. Rev. 1293 (1996) as edited in Robert Merges & Jane Ginsburg, Foundations of Intellectual Property, Foundation Press 2004.
  • Brett Frischmann & Mark Lemley, Spillovers, 107 Colum L Rev 257 (2007) (Pages 257-284)
  • Anne Barron, Copyright Infringement, ‘Free-Riding’ and the Lifeworld (December 8, 2009) in COPYRIGHT AND PIRACY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CRITIQUE, Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis and Jane Ginsburg, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  • Brett Frischmann, Spillovers Theory and Its Conceptual Boundaries, 51 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 801 (2009)

RECOMMENDED

  • Mark Lemley, Contracting Around Liability Rules (February 7, 2012). Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 415. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1910284

Session 6: Incentive Paradigm 3: The Empirical Turn, 10 Jan

  • Christopher Buccafusco, Zachary Burns and Jeanne Fromer, Christopher Sprigman, Experimental Tests of Intellectual Property Laws’ Creativity Thresholds (June 1, 2014). Texas Law Review, Vol. 93, p. 1921, 2014; Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2443667 (Introduction and pages 1932-74, 1977-80)
  • Christopher J. Buccafusco and Christopher Sprigman, The Creativity Effect (July 22, 2010). University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 78, p. 31, 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1647009
  • Bechtold, Stefan and Buccafusco, Christopher and Sprigman, Christopher Jon, Innovation Heuristics: Experiments on Sequential Creativity in Intellectual Property (December 15, 2015). Indiana Law Journal, 2016, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2704107

RECOMMENDED

  • Empirical Studies Database, Center for Empirical Studies of Intellectual Property (CESIP), Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, http://www.kentlaw.edu/cesip/

Session 7: Incentives Paradigm 4: Enforcement and Intermediaries, 11 Jan

  • Reinier H. Kraakman, Gatekeepers: The Anatomy of a Third-Party Enforcement Strategy, 2 J. L. ECON. & ORG. 53 (1986) (pages 53-78)
  • Assaf Hamdani, Gatekeeper Liability, 77 S. CAL. L. REV. 53 (2003) (pages 910-921)
  • Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC sections § 512(k)(1); § 512(c); § 512(i); § 512(h); § 512(f); § 512(m); § 512(j).
  • Claudio Ruiz Gallardo and J. Carlos Lara Gálvez, Liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the exercise of freedom of expression in Latin America and Intermediaries in Towards an Internet Free of Censorship: Proposals for Latin America (Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information) (2012) (pages 13-34)
  • Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Chapter 18 (Intellectual Property), Section J (18:81, 18:82) (pages 18-57-18-60), Annex 18-E (page 18-73) and Annex 18-F (page 18-75)

RECOMMENDED:

  • Margot E. Kaminski, The Capture of International Intellectual Property Law through the U.S. Trade Regime Kaminski, (November 14, 2013). Southern California Law Review, 2014 Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2354324
  • Felix T. Wu, Collateral Censorship and the Limits of Intermediary Immunity, 87 Notre Dame L. Rev. 293 (2011).
  • Timothy Lee, Here’s why Obama trade negotiators push the interests of Hollywood and drug companies, The Washington Post, November 26, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/26/heres-why-obama-trade-negotiators-push-the-interests-of-hollywood-and-drug-companies/
  • Urban, Jennifer M. and Karaganis, Joe and Schofield, Brianna L., Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (March 29, 2016). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2755628

Session 8: Commons and Peer Production, 12 Jan

  • Frishmann, Madison & Strandburg, Governing the Knowledge Commons in Governing the Knowledge Commons (Oxford 2014) (pages 1-39)
  • Charles M. Schweik, Toward the Comparison of Open Source Commons Institutions in Governing the Knowledge Commons (Oxford 2014) (pages 255-276)
  • E. Gabriella Coleman & Alex Golub, Hacker Practice: Moral Genres and the Cultural Articulation of Liberalism, 8 Anthropological Theory 255 (2008)
  • Michael W. Carroll, Creative Commons as Conversational Copyright Intellectual Property and Information Wealth: Issues and Practices in the Digital Age (2006 ed). Ed. Peter K. Yu. Praeger, 2006. 445-461
  • Niva Elkin-Koren, What Contracts Cannot Do: The Limits of Private Ordering in Facilitating a Creative Commons, 74 Fordham L. Rev. 375 (2005)

RECOMMENDED: 

  • Michael Madison, Brett Frischmann, Katherine Strandburg, Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, 95 Cornell L Rev. 657 (2010)
  • Madison, Michael J., Information Abundance and Knowledge Commons (November 10, 2016). A chapter in User Generated Law: Re-Constructing Intellectual Property in a Knowledge Society, edited by Thomas Riis (Edward Elgar, 2016); U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2016-35. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2867578
  • Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (2006) (Skim pages 59-90; Read pages 133-175)
  • Julia Angwin & Geoffrey A. Fowler, Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125893981183759969
  • Tom Simonite, The Decline of Wikipedia, MIT Technology Review, October 22, 2013, http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/
  • Jonathan Zittrain, The Fourth Quadrant 78 Fordham L. Rev. __ (2010)

Session 9: Speech Paradigm, 13 Jan

  • Jack Balkin, The Future of Free Expression in a Digital Age, 33 Pepp. L. Rev. 427 (2009).
  • Owen Fiss, Free Speech and Social Structure, 71 Iowa L Rev 1405 (1986).
  • Seana Shiffrin, A Thinker-Based Approach to Freedom of Speech, 27 CONST. COMM. 283 (2011)
  • Jennifer Rothman, Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 463 (2010) (Read Abstract and pages 513-28)
  • Neil W. Netanel, Copyright in a Democratic Civil Society, 106 YALE L. J. 283 (1996) (pages 341-64)

RECOMMENDED:

  • Hiram Meléndez-Juarbe, Selected Bibliography on Copyright Law and Freedom of Speech, September 27, 2013, http://derechoalderecho.org/2011/09/27/libertad-de-expresion-y-derechos-de-autor-bibliografia-selecta/
  • Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873, 181 L. Ed. 2d 835 (2012)
  • Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985)

Session 10: Fair Use and Fair Dealing, 16 Jan

  • Wendy Gordon, Fair Use as market Failure: A Structural and Economic Analysis of the Betamax Case and Its Predecessors as edited in Robert Merges & Jane Ginsburg, Foundations of Intellectual Property, Foundation Press 2004.
  • Rebecca Tushnet, Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It, 114 YALE L. J. 535 (2004) (pages 549-62)
  • Fred Von Lohman, Fair Use as Innovation Policy, 23 BERKELEY TECH. L. J 1 (2008)
  • Niva Elkin-Koren and Orit Fischman Afori, Taking Users’ Rights to the Next Level: A Pragmatist Approach to Fair Use (August 20, 2014). Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 33, 2014 Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2483939
  • Michael Geist, Fairness Found: How Canada Quietly Shifted from Fair Dealing to Fair Use, in The Copyright Pentalogy: How the supreme Court of Canada shook the foundations of Canadian Copyright law, pages 157-186 

RECOMMENDED

  • William W Fisher III, Reconstructing the Fair Use Doctrine, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1659, 1673 (1988) as edited in Robert Merges & Jane Ginsburg, Foundations of Intellectual Property, Foundation Press 2004.
  • Yu, Peter K., The Confuzzling Rhetoric Against New Copyright Exceptions (July 15, 2014). Kritika, Vol. 1, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2466544

 

Session 11: Taking the User Seriously: Capabilities and the User / Brief Presentations: Final Essays, 17 Jan

  • Julie Cohen, Configuring the Networked Self (2012) (Chapters 3 and 4)
  • Yu, Peter K., Can the Canadian UGC Exception Be Transplanted Abroad? (March 7, 2014). Intellectual Property Journal, Vol. 27, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2405821

RECOMMENDED

  • Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (2009) (selection)

Session 12: Moral Limits of markets?, 18 Jan

  • Margaret Jane Radin, Market-Inalienability, 100 HARV L. REV. 1849 (1987) (pages 1852-70; 1903-21)
  • Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, as edited in Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (Martha Ertman & Joan Williams, Eds, 2005), (pages 122-127)
  • Debra Satz, The Moral Limits of Markets (2010) (Noxious markets) (pages 4-13)
  • Madhavi Sunder, Property in Personhood, in Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (Martha Ertman & Joan Williams, Eds, 2005)
  • Wendy J. Gordon, The ‘Why’ of Markets: Fair Use and Circularity, 116 YALE L.J. POCKET PART 371 (2007), http://yalelawjournal.org/2007/4/25/gordon.html;
  • Rebecca L. Tushnet, Economies of Desire: Fair Use and Marketplace Assumptions, 51 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 513 (2009) (pages 522-536)
  • Diane Leenheer Zimmerman, Is There A Right To Have Something To Say? One view of the public domain, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 297 (2004) (pages 366-370)

RECOMMENDED

  • Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (1983) (pages 6-10; 95-115)
  • Johnson, Eric E., The Economics and Sociality of Sharing Intellectual Property (December 3, 2014). Boston University Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 6, 2014. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2533771

Session 13: Technopolitics and the public/private dichotomy, 19 Jan

  • Lawrence Lessig, The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 501 (1999)
  • Pamela Samuelson, Freedom to Tinker (May 11, 2015). Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2605195
  • Annemarie Bridy, Coding Creativity: Copyright and the Artificially Intelligent Author (July 18, 2011). Stanford Technology Law Review, Vol. 5, pp. 1-28 (Spring 2012).; U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-25. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1888622
  • 7 USC § 1201(a), (b), (c)
  • Canada Copyright Act, Sections 41 and 41.1
  • Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001)

RECOMMENDED

  • Bruno Latour, Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts, in Wiebe Bijker & John Law, Eds., Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies In Sociotechnical Change 225, 227 (1997).
  • Langdon Winner, Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology (1993).