IPSC Breakout Session III

Useful Articles 
Star Athletica: Stuck on the Merry-Ground  – Alfred C. Yen
We’re just going round and round. Those who can’t remember
the past are condemned to repeat it; a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
For a case the SCt took, the Ct was astonishingly indifferent to precedents.
Only 4 cited © cases: Mazer v. Stein; Chosun (2d Cir. 2005) (article need not
remain functional once artistic elements removed); Brandir dissent (statute
controls, not intent); Bleistein.  All we
have to do is look at the object and see if it’s capable of existing separately
from the underlying function.  Doomed to
failure b/c very project of identifying a hypothetical aesthetic object is
riven w/strongly inconsistent perspectives. You can’t escape moving among
perspectives in trying to identify artistic object.  Formalism (form of object itself),
intentionalism, institutionalism (audience reaction). Doesn’t think we can ever
rid ourselves of these contradictions in ordinary practice, and maybe we don’t
want to—each can bolster one of the others.
Court rejects audience and intent as not being based in the
statute; all they want to do is go back to formalism.  Star Athletica then puts us back where we
started, in Mazer v. Stein.  Prediction: we
will go around merry-go-round again.  Wy
won’t it work? Even the very effort of trying to identify whether something is
a useful article is fraught w/difficulty. Airplane wing or sculpture?  Shovel or sculpture?  Wall or sculpture?  Might want to know more about why it was made
and how it is used.
RT: the other part of 102 might provide some protection:
control over artistic design doesn’t give any control over making the thing
depicted.  If form & function are
unified, then anyone can sell that shovel in Home Depot regardless of whether
the shovel-sculpture is ©able.  Now, that
might just shift the intentionalism/institutionalism Q to the defense side, but
it might also take care of many of the situations where we think there are
competitive issues distinct from what we think of as the “real” point of ©.
A: it’s hard to talk about protectability of useful articles
w/o also talking about thickness of ©.
Chris Buccafusco: the opinion lacks formalist analysis.  Can we spot pictorial features/a work of art?  Yes. 
Opinion never describes them or engages w/what you might think formalism
would entail, such as identifying or describing the pictorial/graphic elements.  A formalism that never specifies form, unlike
Mazer & Carol Barnhart at least tried.
A: Court realized that trying to deliver an analysis would
make it even more clear that there is nothing more there.  Thomas ducks: it’s the only way to avoid
being criticized for subjectivity.
McKenna: some of these problems are Congress’ fault.  There is a definition of useful article,
putting thumb on scale of calling it a useful article, but the courts have
never taken that seriously. Also, Congress asked for an impossible task. Really
Congress wanted to separate © from design patent, not © from utility patent,
and that’s really difficult.  Look at the
examples Congress used, and they’re all highly analogous to physical
separability. Ignoring that caused Court problems.  You can’t really distinguish applied art from
industrial design.
A: Temporal equity problem: if it was sculpture first,
conversion to useful article later shouldn’t matter. If that’s the case, the
reasoning goes, then it shouldn’t matter in the other direction.  That’s what gets you stuck.
Q: So we should just reject the temporal equity point.  If you use 102(b) to let defendants sell things
as useful articles but not as sculpture, then you get lots of administrative
costs.
Responding to Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands – Lili Levi
Issues: Practical impact of indeterminacy; Court’s approach
to art; whether other limiting doctrines will work and how well; use of © for
branding/anticompetitive non-© strategies.
Conflicting views on how bad Star Athletica is; the attempt to adopt a deceptively simple,
uncertain unitary test creates an incentive for opportunistic litigation which
is likely to expand boundaries—already happening, Puma’s action against Forever
21 over Rihanna’s footware, which is plastic slides w/bows and fake fur on
them. These aren’t Schiaparelli’s dresses. Court doesn’t talk about affect on
fashion industry and whether it would be good or bad to kill fast fashion.
There can be different interpretations of function—you don’t
need to use the same definition of function to determine separability that you
use to determine whether something is a useful article.  Possible functions: Mechanical, marketing (enhancing
saleable value), branding. What about making people look thinner? Use in an
interactive way w/audience’s perceptual responses, knowingly crafted to achieve
resonance—does that make them expressive?
Star Athletica said
it wasn’t ruling on originality, but she isn’t very hopeful, given that in the
case itself there was disagreement b/t dissent and concurrence on elasticity of
originality. Could make arguments about role of originality being different
w/useful articles, but don’t know.  Maybe
we should also look at scene a faire—whether there’s enough common
understanding already; that’s mushy doctrine too. Granular, case by case
analysis will be required.
Pam Samuelson: there’s no question that functionality was
key part of what Congress was trying to do; ignoring that is a huge problem
w/the decision. If we care about the implications, working on what function
means is a task that we can bring to this. 
Even though the definition of useful article states that conveying
information is never functional, she found dozens of cases finding compilations
functional and uncopyrightable.
Intellectual Property’s Usefulness Problem, or Functionality
as Fair Use – James Y. Stern
Even if we rested on any one of those 3 visions Yen talked
about, we’d still have problems of incoherence b/c we have ontological
problems.  Humvee designed to survive
bomb blasts, deployed as suburban vehicle—is it functional in a
subdivision? 
Externalist controls—preserving space for patent law.  Internalist—limits based on our view of what ©
is. Ontological v. pragmatic: the essential Q is whether TM/© protection would
restrict access to a useful technology. Could defendant make a product that
works as well without using material claimed by right holder?  Focus should be on alleged infringer, not
right-holder. Doctrine should treat functionality as a defense, not an
invalidity basis.  Not taking any
position on where burdens of proof should be allocated, but it should be
case-specific in terms of what the D is up to, rather than the nature of what
the P has produced.  Traffix: currently
upside down—focused on whether the spring is the reason the TM owner’s device
works. In a lot of places in TM, that’s not always important, where we deal
w/side by side competitors in the same market—functional for P and functional
for D will overlap. If both make luggage w/shiny lining that causes confusion;
in one case it’s purely decorative while the other has thermal insulation.  If the former is the senior user and sues,
its feature isn’t functional for its use—and it seems like it should win!  [I doubt any court would so find, though.  Descriptive fair use would be a doctrinal
hook if you can’t stretch functionality, though I have hopes that a court would
recognize at least a category of defendant-side or product-category
functionality.]  If the latter is the
senior user and sues, it loses.  [This version
is almost literally the old aluminum washboard case, updated.  False advertising would still be available as
a claim, if consumers understood the silver to communicate the fact of thermal
insulation.  If they didn’t, then so
what?]
Copyright hypo: imagine bike rack designer copied the
original Brandir sculpture, rather than the resulting bike rack.  Result under useful article doctrine seems to
be that there is infringement, which means restricted access to tech.  Duchamp’s urinal would be the counterexample.
Star Athletica was
interpreting what was really an attempt to create an internal limit: protection
for industrial design excluded, but not for applied art.  Can’t you imagine anything as art,
though?   Functionality takes care of many worries b/c
functional uses are immune from © claims, and context matters—useful article
doctrine requires exclusion of fact of utility in considering the nature of
creative elements.  USB connector in the
shape of a faucet—can’t protect the fact that it’s a USB connector through ©.  [Could through design patent.]

Lemley: internalist justifications ultimately have to fall
back on externalist—you need a theory of why © shouldn’t extend too far; he
thinks that will ultimately be about why we want other doctrines. We ought to
have a doctrine of D-focused functionality, but we need not get rid of
P-focused functionality. Even where there isn’t a D-focused functionality, we
don’t want to give © or TM protection for truly functional elements.  [Really? What about ipodmybaby.com, where
they put the image of the [functional, by hypothesis] click wheel on a baby
onesie, where it was nonfunctional. 
Seems little reason to allow non-Apple parties to do that, though there
may also be minimal reason to stop them.]
A: thinks that’s more true for © than for TM.
Q: if you’re thinking about integrating useful articles in
102(b), you have to think about internalist views—there’s a lot of exclusions
that aren’t dependent on patent law—many of such exclusions exist b/c we think
they shouldn’t be protected at all,
by patent or otherwise.
Buccafusco: you don’t need anything about Star Athletica to
get copyrightability for the USB shaped like a faucet—that’s Mazer v. Stein.
A: but what are the copyrightable aspects?  Combination w/practical device should be
excluded from consideration.
James Grimmelmann: TM: descriptive fair use + deny
protection to descriptive terms as marks, analogous to P-side and D-side
functionality. Serves prophylactic purposes. 
There are arguments that scenes a faire and merger are defenses that have
been pulled back into protectability. 
That USB faucet might not be protectable b/c there’s no originality.
A: even a pure mold copy? 
Might/might not have minimal © necessary.  As for both kinds of functionality, that
might be practical, but don’t confuse prophylactics for principle.  Looking for answers in the nature of what
makes the characteristic functional in the first placer.
Trademarks & Consumer Perception Room 304
Should Trademark Law Protect Marketing? Deven Desai
Why not protect nontraditional TMs?  Countries are increasingly accepting
registrations for them. 
Why not?  First, scope.
How do you know what’s being claimed.  US
is less precise than Europe, which requires specific Pantone.  How do different people see the color?
Second, exhaustion of available colors, shapes, etc. 
Leads to aesthetic functionality morass.  Significant nonTM function: what does that
mean?  Marketing literature: Design is
part of branding, which can be used to compete. 
The whole point is to move beyond competitors’ ability to compete.  Design is a source of differentiation.  It’s not marginal to the product but core;
design & marketing dep’ts work together. Designers are looking to tap into
innate attitudes—features, shapes, forms, colors, materials, surfaces,
textures, to build brand image. Aesthetics and ease of use are all developed
together.
Notion of innate/essence capturing: communicating an aesthetic
is done best by using symbols to tap into innate preferences—preferences for
unity, proportion and symmetry, etc. 
Bright colors; shoes (large to signify power; even if a hair dryer has a
ton of power in smallness, consumers like it better when it’s big), angular
forms for masculinity in cars, roundness (phone edges, car trunks).  Functional/ergonomic: largeness can indicate
power, communicate quality by looking reliable or solid.  Does the number of buttons make consumers think a machine is easier to use?
Consumers care about shape of button.
Attention drawing/categorization.  Varying size and color; contrasting colors
can draw attention. Categorization: the way a consumer chooses products as
fitting w/in product market can drive consumer choice.  You want prototypicality: look or appearance
that makes most people think it belongs in the product space.
Look at Apple’s claims for trade dress—all those features
seem functional under this view—icons arranged to be easy to see and use, contrasting
colors b/t borders and screen, rounded shapes for phone & icons—all these
things you’d be very wise to use if you wanted to compete.
Maybe we should have a ban, taking seriously that TM isn’t
supposed to be incentivizing creativity. Consumers would learn that product
design trade dress isn’t necessarily reliable indicator of source.  Reality, though: rules aren’t going away—so we
need to manage it. Justin Hughes has proposed a way to handle design, which
Desai doesn’t think will work.  Where
aesthetic appeal preexists the product, he says, there should be functionality,
but not otherwise. But: designs are hybrids. They draw on and perform a variety
of functions at the same time—designers are explicitly tapping into innate and
preexisting preferences or biases.  Also,
there are not clear metrics on what should be granted. EU isn’t as clear as
people want, though it’s clearer than we are. 
Super-limited protection/scope might work, but there’s still the deep
problem that the more we grant, the more overreach we get, worse than in word
marks.  Still, it’s here to stay, so we
need limiting efforts.
Q: curb cuts, designed for wheelchairs but used by many
other people. Why the iPad became such an appealing piece of software/hardware
for differently abled people—goes to a lot of the things you’re talking
about.  That’s an example of the worst
case scenario for protecting these features—you give monopoly on accessibility.
Gerhardt: role of registration in determining scope?  Frequently we seen trade dress defined
against what the D is doing—ex post.  Ex
ante applications to register are in a weird space; companies proceed
differently than they do w/registering word marks.  They jump on word marks, but w/trade dress
they sometimes try to pin it down to put everyone else on notice, or it doesn’t
occur to them, or they don’t want to be pinned down so they wait.
A: Needs to know more about that.
McKenna: you could harden up the claiming rules to limit ex
post problems.
Trademarks, Employees, and the Firm – Matthew T. Bodie
TM is about attribution, so has particular puzzles for
employees/firm.  How can a firm claim
that a product or service is protected by TM when the employees aren’t making
the product/performing the service?  What
about the firm can change and yet still be the same “source”?  Paradox of Theseus’ ship—every bit is
replaced, and is it still the same ship? 
[I would say, why are you asking?] 
School of Law isn’t the building it’s in; it isn’t the people who are
there now (all the originals have been replaced).  Is the school anything more than the TM, the
right to say that it’s the School of Law? 
What about a labor-fissured firm, like Uber/independent
contractors? How can we say their work is “Uber”? The magic of the brand is to
encompass this, and the TM is the legal operationalization of enforcing the
brand connection.  Work done by non-employees
is still our TM.
TM has cheated and said that the business is the source—the fictional
entity. Firms have been arbitraging and we shouldn’t let them get away w/it—disavowing
for labor & employment law purposes, but claiming for brand & TM purposes.  TM law does say that you can lose a mark
through giving up on quality control—control over quality establishes the
mark.  Firms control through contracts,
etc. w/outside entities.
Choices for fissured firms: maintain control over labor and
become employer/joint employer (operate as a firm)—or if they want to outsource
housekeeping and not control it, they should lose TM b/c they aren’t
controlling quality any more.
Lunney: TM Act: authorizes TM owners to allow related cos. to
use their marks, defining related as those TM owner has control over.  But people don’t know or care whether there
are independently owned franchises or centrally controlled; you’d force central
control and McDonald’s seems to be doing fine having both types of restaurants.

McKenna: 100 years ago, outsourcing would have been
considered fraud. There was a very deliberate move in the common law and then
in the statute to abandon that, to enable companies to create different kinds
of commercial relationships. You might say TM law enabled the labor/employment
situation you enabled, and the payoff is that the market structure isn’t
independent of the rest of the law. If TM law were different, it would create a
different labor/employment market. Another take: in a service economy, what
does control mean? That might be a different paper.

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IPSC Breakout Session II

IP Theory 
The Boundaries of Intellectual Property: A Preliminary Exploration
of Constitutional Salience –
Amy Kapczynski
What IP law is about: what values beyond efficiency we might
be able to say this law serves.  You can’t
justify IP v. grants or prizes based on efficiency w/o further beliefs, such as
beliefs about the dangers & competences of the state. The value is thus
more something like liberalism—better, more free society if we minimize the
role of the state, creating private property in ideas.
More than liberal values, republican values.  Republicanism has a theory of political economy.  Jefferson believed in an agrarian republic
preventing vast inequalities of wealth and the corruption associated
w/aristocracy.  Jefferson restricts
primogeniture & slavery in Northwest Ordinance—conception that property law
had to reflect and build a society they wanted. More opportunity for white men
in the West than the South in the decades following the Northwest Ordinance: it
worked.  Property qualifications for
voting were restrictive, based on idea that you needed a stake to be
politically responsible; but there were progressive strains as well. 
Best reading of IP clause thus makes public interest a truly
meaningful concepts. Anti-oligarchical, equality, anti-monarchical commitments,
giving limits in IP clause resonance. 
Look also at early state © laws which emphasized public interest,
limits.  Somewhat startling
egalitarianism of early US patent law. 
Focus on boundary cases: what’s in and what’s out? Wheaton
v. Peters: why allow © on court reports? At the time, reporters may have needed
incentives, but also weren’t reporting exactly what judges said.  May also help understand patentable subject
matter and preemption—concerns about competition, anti-oligarchy, equality of
access that aren’t organized around incentives.
INS v. AP: creating quasi-property right in news: Court
first has to say why give a property right at all, v. Brandeis pointing out
that people hurt others in business all the time.  Majority: news is important.  B/c we live in a democratic society, not b/c
we have preferences for news.  Second
move in the case: why doesn’t the quasi-property right extend to everyone?  If preferences tell us what news to produce,
a robust property right might be efficient. 
But Pitney shuts that off: Framers couldn’t have wanted to give first
reporter exclusive rights—our constitutional order can’t permit property in
news.  From efficiency perspective, that’s
a bit puzzling, but not from republicanism. 
Anemic right created under INS.
Government patent infringement: mostly there was immunity;
now you can get reasonable damages, not lost profits.  Gov’t may be interested in national security,
drugs—there we suspend property logic. 
Commitment to the public determining through political process how we
want to treat these goods.
Q: I understand why not grants, but what republican
advantage does IP have over prizes?
A: Might be in part the lack of a highly developed
administrative state at the time. Over time, more elaborate state apparatus
could achieve some of these values in different ways/playing a more active
role.  [Seems like reasonable to talk
about Bayh-Dole at this point.]
Q: What’s the role of the state in INS?  Pinckney has a conception of private property
that doesn’t purport to rely on the state.
Chris Sprigman: Is this a matter for the courts to enforce,
or is that not included in a republican conception?
Jonathan Masur: is the argument that there are strands of
republicanism or that republicanism is a dominant theme?
A Heap of IP: On the Essential Indeterminacy of Intellectual
Property Rights –Jeremy Sheff
IP rights, or scope of any individual rights, will have some
zone of irreducible indeterminacy. (1) intellectual property operates based on
categories rather than based on physical phenomenon. A car is a thing in the
world you can touch. There may be questions of boundary definition between one
plot of land and another, but there is no question that there is a plot.  IP defines either things or possible things
that might be subject to rights to control others’ use or bringing other things
into the world.  (2) IP rights, even
defined by exemplar, have features—they are composed of the whole of those
elements. If you take one piece away, you will face questions about whether you
are still dealing w/the same thing.
Philosophy has tools for this.  Experiences of people in a position to make
the decision will determine (1).  Old
philosophical puzzle: you have a heap of wheat & take one grain away—at what
point does it stop being heap?  Goes to
the idea that there are some predicates that are very clear at the extremes but
unclear in the middle.  We do this w/IP
all the time.  Infringement doctrines get
at this part-to-whole or little-by-little relations in various ways.  Egyptian Goddess does away with point of
novelty; says to look at article as a whole. There is no one feature of a
patented design that makes the difference b/t infringement or noninfringement.
If that’s true, how are we to determine whether a particular accused
device/work is or isn’t within the scope of an IP right. Philosophers have a
few approaches, none of which are particularly useful for lawyers. One:
epistemic limitations prevent us from knowing where the truth is, although
there is one. But in law, someone is going to decide.  Two: Truth gaps w/r/t certain predicates—there
are definite truths at the extremes, and no truth or falsity in the middle—it is
neither true nor false.  Lawyers &
judges can’t do that with specific disputes. 
Third: truth can be a matter of degree, not bivalent. Law again can’t do
that w/r/t infringement.
What then? If it’s true that application of rules isn’t
determined in advance but by social context/practices of people making these
decisions, then we have to recognize that different people from different
contexts will come out different ways. Who decides becomes incredibly important—allocation
of decisionmaking authority may be more important than the rules’ content:
whether a question is for a jury or a judge. We see them divided up in
different ways, w/some instability.  The
law itself will not determine the scope of the right; only in practice through
application by people who approach questions based on context/institution from
which they come. So we should look at systematic differences.
James Grimmelmann: why is IP special?  Your answer may be on IP’s in rem nature—not necessarily
corresponding to specific physical objects. 
The jury is special here b/c it can take a decision that doesn’t have to
be reasoned or consistent.  Standards of
review that permit higher bodies to say “it’s in a range that we can allow the
decision to stand.”
A: Allocating to jury is a way of saying “who can say?”  There’s no clear truth value, so give it to a
relevant community, and maybe a jury is that in a democratic society.
Q: connect philosophical ways of understanding vagueness to
using different communities as a solution. 
One philosophical resolution is semantic indeterminacy.  We just haven’t managed to nail the answers
down, but we could in theory do so.  One
way of understanding outsourcing to various communities is engaging in the task
of building answers—the jury can answer one way or another. Then based on jury’s
determination the issue might become less vague, via precedent.
Masur: Explain what purchase you get through Wittgenstein
etc. that we didn’t get through Holmes and the realist revolution—the life of
the law has not been law, it has been experience; law is about predicting what
the jury will do; based on policy not pure logic.
Felix Wu: seconding Grimmelmann: to what extent is IP
special?  Linedrawing is always
difficult: what counts as speech protected by the First Amendment? Has the same
characteristics you just described.  Not
clear to him that the whole game is institutions/allocation of decisionmaking—what
part of the game might be elsewhere?  You
send something to the jury, but presumably they get instructions about some
notion of substance we want to maintain.
RT: Puffery: you can
actually decide that the truth is undecidable by a court.  Burden of proof: can’t it take care of these
issues (assuming, as Wu says, that you have the substance defined properly).
Q: people in a creative community might notice
unpredictability, and might want to avoid the judicial system.  They could create ADR where they’d trust
other community members to make more predictable, sounder judgments about how
much borrowing is ok, how much new stuff one must add.  We do sometimes see ADR in creator communities,
in response to perception that courts don’t understand.
Sheff: one question is whether best practices are entitled
to any deference—a way of assigning responsibility to a community.
The Game’s the Same, But the Rules Have Changed: Rights of Publicity,
False Endorsement, and the First Amendment – David S. Welkowitz
Football players who object to uncompensated use of images
in videogames: two cases that are the same that come out differently, depending
on what he alleges.  From the First
Amendment perspective, they are the same case. 
EA says the First Amendment protects its right to use the image.  Court acknowledges full 1A protection.  This makes no sense.  Contrast: 6th Circuit’s Rosa Parks
case uses same test for ROP and for false endorsement.  It is unusual to have such a conflict—for at
least one of the claims, the statute might do the work instead of the First
Amendment.  Here’s Johnny toilet case: no
likely confusion, but that didn’t matter to the ROP claim.
Analogy: Hustler v. Falwell. Can’t use IIED to substitute
for 1A-barred defamation claim.  Compare
contract law, which can be used to override otherwise existing 1A rights.  Tentative conclusions: maybe to reconcile
this by looking at what interests the 1A protects; may also imply things for
remedies in ROP—if you are seeking a defamation-like remedy, perhaps you
shouldn’t be able to seek that to evade the 1A—Food Lion v. Capital Cities, 4th
Circuit limited remedy for contract-like claims to avoid defamation-like
remedies.
Heymann: Hustler comes from a sense that the P is trying an
end run.  You’re making the same sort of
argument here [but courts are happy saying ROP is different—it was invented
precisely to make this end run, whereas IIED had a different history and really
a different set of aims].
A: The 1A outcome can’t vary unless the interests are
sufficiently different, and that’s where the problem lies.
Pam Samuelson: ROP/privacy claim and copyright claim at the
same time—1A protected D from privacy/publicity liability, but not ©–based on
a photo of a gay couple kissing, used by a conservative political group.  Might look at nature of the interest in ©
versus ROP.
Yen: look at who got paid—Brown was paid and Keller was not
(as college player).  That may influence
the way courts think about it.  Falwell
is about 1A’s Faustian bargain for politicians: in return for coming forward,
you expose yourself to attack—where’s the bargain?
A: the panel drops a footnote in Brown saying that if it
were a ROP case we’d do it differently, so that status doesn’t seem to have
mattered. 
Rothman: Agree that we need to harmonize.  Brown refiled w/ROP claim and succeeded in
moving the case forward; EA then settled for $600,000.
Choice of Law and the Right of Publicity – Mary LaFrance
Differences in subject matter: whether it’s protected at all;
what aspects are protected; duration (postmortem; whether it will be forfeited
if not exploited in life, etc.).  Courts
typically apply forum’s default conflict of law rules to ROP.  To determine scope of P’s exclusive rights
courts usually apply law of place of infringement, but to determine existence
of protectable right, majority rule applies the law of the exploited person’s
domicile, or domicile at time of death. Domicile rule is typically justified as
traditional choice of law rule for property ownership.
Domicile rule conflates issues: (1) whether there is a
protectable postmortem right in the exploited persona, by analogy to other
forms of state protected IP—the place of infringement should determine that
(e.g., state law copyright, which has suddenly taken off, and whether it
protects pre-1972 sound recordings; trademarks protected under state law; trade
secrets)—courts ignore that in other types of IP, not personal property, courts look to the place of infringement.  Conflated with (2) if the right exists, who
owns it? That’s just a matter of state inheritance law, and we look to the law
of the state governing inheritance, which is probably domicile at death. There
it makes perfect sense to look at decedent’s domicile.
Transferability/assignability presents similar issues: which
state’s law should determine whether it’s assignable, which depends on whether
it’s a property right or personal right. If there is an assignment, is it
valid? Which state’s law governs contract interpretation?
Case, Bi-Rite, which didn’t apply Mass. law (local) or UK
law (domicile). Illinois, Connecticut, and Georgia, b/c some of the UK
performers granted exclusive licenses to Illinois & Conn. To exploit their
ROP; others licensed through a Ga. Company. Therefore, court applied law of
place where licensees were
domiciled.  This is weird.
Sometimes courts don’t even spot the conflicts question;
automatically applied law of place where infringement occurred, e.g., Zacchini, or Estate of Presley (D.N.J.) where at the time Ga. didn’t recognize a
postmortem right but NJ did, even though estate couldn’t have won a suit in his
home state.  Policy arguments against
current domicile approach: How can you have a class action w/the domicile
rule?  If the ROP is a property right, as
most courts treat it, why treat it differently from other IP rights?
One argument in favor: for books, internet—you can’t really
limit it to one state where you can’t be sure where you’ll be an
infringer.  Domicile rule might not be
the answer but we need some form of predictability.
These laws do seem to discriminate against
nonresidents.  Judge in Bi-Rite case
suggested it was unconstitutional to discriminate against foreigners.  But in going through antidiscrimination
provisions, the problem is that the plaintiffs are not necessarily
nonresidents. Discrimination is usually based on content of goods, not location
of the merchants—content isn’t protected under the laws of our state b/c it’s
based on some nonresident’s persona.  [I’m
not sure I see that.  The P still wins or
loses depending on residency.]
Q: Potential difficulties: where the owner of the rights
under one state’s law would be different through inheritance than others.
Q: why not a uniform federal law?

A: not going to happen any time soon; no one is really
lobbying for it.

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2017 IPSC Conference at Cardozo School of Law

Usual disclaimers; there were lots of overlaps where I had to make tough choices, and I favored presentations where I hadn’t previously commented on drafts.
Day 1 Breakout Session I
Trademark Doctrine
Mapping Confusion – Mark. P. McKenna & Rebecca Tushnet
Problem with LOC test. 
Courts use the multifactor test. 
Developed for a particular purpose: infringement in cases that didn’t
involve directly competing goods, but related goods; and overwhelmingly in word
mark/logo cases.  They’ve become a
multipurpose tool in every sort of TM case, regardless of the theory of
confusion and regardless of context.  One
reason that happened is that 20th c. courts collapsed a whole bunch
of different forms of unfair competition claims into TM w/o much consideration
of nuances.  Among other things—papered
over significant conceptual differences b/t types of claims. Lost sight of use
as heuristic, rather than end in itself. 
Detached from sense of what they’re supposed to be measuring.  At the end, court shakes a magic 8-ball and
tells you which factors matter.  7th
Circuit cases: reason, reason, reason, conclusion.
The LOC test is supposed to be measuring something other
than itself. When it doesn’t measure that thing, it’s become detached from its
conceptual anchor. Cts implicitly understand that and may truncate the test or
abandon it altogether (Rogers/nominative fair use).  That seems awfully ad hoc.  What is the theory about which factors should
apply when?  What is the theory for which
theories of infringement should be used? 
Cracker Barrel restaurants; Kraft’s preexisting processed cheese product
Cracker Barrel.  Raises questions about
priority in different markets, but 7th Cir. treats it in
conventional source confusion ways—whether people will think it’s the same
thing as the restaurant, then says that restaurants differ from cheese.
Entirely ignores co-branding (e.g. TGIF frozen foods)—straightforward
sponsorship confusion claim. Can also see this in IIC cases or reverse
confusion—Gibson guitar—court just says we won’t go there b/c it scares us;
could swallow up the rest of confusion b/c in most case it’s reasonable to ask
whether some people might wonder about source when they saw a thing.
Paper attempts to do descriptive mapping: you say LOC is the
test for infringement, but in fact you’re not doing that.  Sometimes we can justify that—NFU.  But it’s not just theories of infringement
but also context—trade dress cases differ from word mark cases, especially in
product configuration—increasing emphasis on labeling, contextual aspects that
don’t show up in other cases. 
Prescriptive: whether it makes sense to explicitly break apart some
other categories.
Examples: sensible to say we ought to treat trade dress
cases differently, for the same reason we would’ve once treated them as unfair
competition claims.  Ought to treat them
differently from word mark and logos; we’ve lost something by refusing to
consider ontology (at least claiming to).
RT: Rogers as proof of concept.  You don’t need and in fact don’t have a
unitary likelihood of confusion test—the 2d Circuit’s recent treatment of
nominative fair use notwithstanding.  One
payoff: break out trade dress again, not in protectability but rather in
infringement.
Dan Burk: is this a paper about LOC or a paper about how
courts do things?  It could be said about
Fed. Cir. and doctrine of equivalents, or 9th Cir. and idea/expression.  This is what courts do w/tests.
McKenna: it’s about confusion too—how we ought to think
about confusion assertions.  Right now P
picks theories of confusion and one sticks (maybe), as if there’s nothing about
those theories that fits a particular pattern of case.
Q: Restatement of TM? 
After claim preclusion case, having PTO issue studies/working papers
about how they might want confusion issues analyzed in different
contexts—litigators might have different perspective.  Institutional way of thinking.
McKenna: that’s a bigger Q even than this paper. Believes
should be done by courts, in part b/c Congress would not do well. Common law
process has produced lessons that have been ignored/forgotten; we are trying to
catch the patterns. Don’t want to let TM Ps tell us what they want.
Jennifer Rothman: Instead of unitary tests, we need lots of
different tests?  Do we need a unitary concept
We lose sight of what we’re actually trying to figure out, which is
whether consumers are going to be confused [RT: and act on it]. Could more
tests worsen that?  Second, you throw NFU
and Rogers into the bucket, which are defenses not prima facie case—even if
it’s confusing, we might let it go.
McKenna: Rogers is a nice example. What courts have done is
recognize pattern of cases—deviate from LOC factors and ask a different set of
questions, doesn’t bear much relationship to LOC multifactor test. It’s not a
defense; it’s a mode of analysis for a particular type of case.  That’s not the only example, but there are
other patterns and we should make that explicit. Part of the cost of using the
multifactor test is that we have obscured that. 
And it has also obscured, confusion about what?  Let’s be more careful
about what we’re trying to measure and test. 
Not about proliferation of tests but sometimes truncating the factors.
This analysis might lead more naturally to double identity—same mark and same
goods, no point in doing LOC test.  Old
tests: only thing they really measured was similarity of marks, b/c competition
was required. The LOC multifactor test was created because that got blown up.
There are pockets that demand different approaches.
Jake Linford: Error costs v. administrative costs.  Do you approach this is concreteness about
deviating from multifactor tests, or do you want offramps for different issues,
like IIC or post-sale confusion.  You may
have to wait for courts to follow things like Kozinski’s NFU test. Which courts
should be the innovators?
McKenna: not the 7th Cir.  Functionality law has crystallized around a
pretty clear set of rules (except Fed. Cir.). 
Most cases now have converged on results, w/slightly different
terminology. This can happen and in some contexts is happening. We should build
some conceptual coherence about it so it’s less ad hocery.
Graeme Dinwoodie: One thing that happened w/double identity
was collapse into confusion analysis, but w/burdens of proof. Maybe what it
highlights is whether you want to categorize types of case by type of use or by
reference to the type of harm at issue. If you do the latter, which might be
what IIC is about, you might have a vehicle in Lexmark for doing that in the courts. 
McKenna: There’s overlap in type of use/type of harm, but
we’re trying to do both. We shouldn’t pretend that all assertions of harm are
the same.
Deborah Gerhardt: type of mark too, descriptive v.
suggestive?
Copyright Doctrine
Copyright’s Transformation – Glynn S. Lunney, Jr.
Analog drove a lot in © that we don’t even think about
today: natural monopoly economics predominate b/c of costs of distribution.
Digital era: no longer true.  Example of
duration: book would be distributed and then go out of print. Duration didn’t
matter b/c the book wasn’t going to be printed again. Similarly w/derivative
work. High capital costs to make one film from a book. Public performance:
broadcasting networks had limited bandwidth. Digital changes the high fixed
costs/low marginal costs of natural monopoly environment.
All the re-users were natural monopolies—broadcasting networks.  License fees are not passed on to consumers:
TV station needs license from ASCAP/BMI, that won’t change the number of ads
per hour they run.  Derivative works
licensing costs to author won’t change cost of movie ticket. A prospect theory
of © made sense: assign rights to initial owner and allow them to decide on
exploitation.  Without a natural
monopoly, © itself becomes the monopoly. The reason we only have a couple of
digital performance services is b/c there is a DPR and you need permissions
from lots of © owners. We almost had widespread webcasting, but we don’t.  Films: took 40 years to get a good Star Wars
sequel after Empire, but for the Long
Island Lolita case we got 3 films quickly, each from a different person’s
perspective.
Prices of 50 best books from 19th c/20th
c.  In paper world, average cost was
$9/copy for © works, a bit lower for not-in-©. 
For digital, average cost was $10 for ©; $0 for not-in-©.  Electrons cost less than trees but consumers
are still asked to pay more (transferring their surplus). Getting less (no
right to transfer, give to library) but being charged more.
Value-based v. cost-based pricing. Imagine a world w/just 2
products, food and music.  Imagine: each
consumer has $100 endowment and identical preferences, and cost of each is $10.
If everything is cost-based, then consumers spend $10 on food and $10 on music
and keep $80.  If music is value-based
while food remains cost-based b/c it’s competitive market, consumers will have
to pay $90.  If society gets wealthier
and consumers have $120, all that value goes to the industry. © is thus a tax
on the full value of everything created by society. What happens if food
technology improves and becomes cheaper—do farmers get to keep the surplus? No,
b/c it’s competitive/cost-based market. That money goes to the music sector
too.
Result of digital age: overestimate social cost of lost
incentives and underestimate social cost of lost access.
In the 90s, when we gave the music industry all that money,
we don’t see response to incentives we would have expected under conventional
theory.
RT: Wouldn’t that tax on innovation still exist if food were
competitive regardless?  It goes to
consumers or music industry.
Lunney: yes; he’s just trying to point out what it really
means to say that the value-based pricing is fine, you can just charge what the
market will bear.
Q: if people save instead of spending, does that factor
in?  What about infringement factoring
in, where people refuse to pay and use other means? Does that make it more like
cost-based?
Lunney: I’ve set it up as perfect price discrimination by
having step demand function and uniform preferences; in the real world no
value-based system works that way and some will be more effective at price
discrimination than others. So some will remain in consumers’ pockets.  There’s no cap on how much value-based industries
can capture in the model, whereas in the real world you can’t.  [Also b/c in the real world eventually the peasants
will revolt, which has some conceptual relationship to torrenting.]
Rosenblatt: demand issues—insatiable hunger for more Star Trek stuff, but maybe not for more
copies of a particular Star Trek movie. 
Can you account for that?
Lunney: that’s about the costs of licensing, which are
treated as if they were still analog.
Incentivizing Conceptual Art Through Social Norms—Guy A. Rub
Multiple copy model (Harry Potter) and single copy model
(Guernica).  Books have to control
copying b/c this is where the money is made, whereas Picasso’s money isn’t in
copies; copies are inferior substitutes, so all he needs is personal property
law, not copyright law.  Conceptual art
is somewhere in the middle.  Definition: “Art
in which the concepts or ideas take precedence over traditional aesthetic
concerns. This means the idea is important but the execution is a perfunctory
affair.” Value is opposite place from where © locates it.  MOMA paid a lot for Duchamp’s shovel (In
Advance of the Broken Arm)—no different to the art world than paying a lot for
Guernica.  What do you do if there’s no
specific object attached to the work of art? 
Consider Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
(1991): It’s instructions.  175 pounds of
cellophane-wrapped candies, visitors invited to take candy, museum replenishes
the taken candies every day.  It has a
meaning: 175 pounds was the weight Ross, his partner, was when he was healthy
and not dying of AIDS; the candies are the diminishment of the disease.  But what color, shape, size is the work? None
of this is defined.  Can be piled in a
corner, put on the floor in a rectangle, used to form a line that encircles the
museum.  Where is the © protection, even
setting aside the fixation issue?  None
of it is protected.  What does he sell?
He sells the idea.  A similar work by the
same artist sold for $8 million.  What
did the museum buy?  Not the candies, and
not the ©.  Nonetheless, descriptions do
bear © notices in the name of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.  The foundation claims to own © in “all works
by Gonzalez-Torres” (some of his work has more physical components).
Curators say: these works are “owned,” typically by a museum,
but it’s difficult to explain what is owned. They wouldn’t imagine presenting
them w/o a lending agreement from the museum that “owns” them. Otherwise this
would be “fake” or “forged.” Even though it’s the curator at the “borrowing”
museum that decides the shape and arrangement of the candies.  In addition, get permission from relevant
artist/foundation. Lending museum generally requires it, and even if not, we
will do it. A “heavily inspired” work doesn’t need any of this. If the level of
copying is artistically justifiable (“if it’s good”) we won’t ask for
permission—curators even had a difficult time understanding the question.  “Copies” by individuals are sometimes
perceived differently.
Artists have weapons in their arsenal to control works w/o
law—Richard Prince says he doesn’t his like his 1980s work any more, doesn’t
represent him as an artist. Some museums won’t show it any more, others
will.  Lost at least some value.  He created a work for Ivanka Trump, then
disowned it. 
Takeaways: strong gatekeepers/strong enough social norms:
art world create a de facto in rem right in public ideas—private ordering steps
in, but it mimics legal language of ownership/licensing.  Thin and flexible right, doesn’t seem to
cover personal copies or derivative works. 
The museum trusts the foundation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres b/c the person
who runs it knew him well. Notion of exhaustion isn’t followed; artist and
foundation are keepers of authenticity. Legal rights from VARA are limited but
powered by community norms. Artists have leverage over “property” owner.
Q: What about the story behind the art? What gives it
meaning is the reason that the candies are there and that they weigh 175 lbs.
Isn’t that protectable expression?
A: I would push back on that. Those are facts. 
Q: isn’t the candy the expression of the story?  Undefined, but still.  The story that goes along w/it could limit
the explanation others might offer.
A: context gives it power, yes
RT: Conceptual appropriation art: Did you ask them what
would happen if I titled a pile of candy “After Felix Gonzalez-Torres”?
A: Asked them about appropriation art, though not this
precise question.  They said they were
happy with having appropriation art in their museums, so if it met that
definition they’d be fine w/it.
Q: what would be the advantage of copying w/o
permission?  It wouldn’t necessarily
allow them to charge less for admission. 
What happens to the rogue gatekeeper? 
Will donations collapse?
A: they’d excommunicate the rogue. They’d say this isn’t
art.
Perzanowski: Do they think they’re following the law?
A: Talking to their lawyers is next step, but his sense is
that yes, they think they’re using legal concepts. [Which is consistent w/other
things we know about how people tend to think that the law is what they think
is just.]
Revisiting (Moral) Rights for IP-Wronged Music Vocalists—Tuneen
E. Chisolm
Followup to earlier paper about ownership interests of music
vocalists—seen up close inequities that are visited on vocalists because of
industry practices/©.  This piece looks
at moral rights justification for proposed © solutions.  Can they fill the gap for absence of moral
rights protection for non-visual artists. 
It’s a contract issue, but also a bargaining power issue.  Different rights for sound recordings;
non-economic inequities from involuntary associations, such as political
campaigns, advertising, sampling, objectionable soundtracks.  ROP: Hasn’t worked for vocalists when their
actual recordings were used under license. 
Could address inequities w/moral right of integrity, but also wants to
explore whether © could do the job if © protected a fixed performance as an
applied composition, w/vocalist as author & full bundle of rights, subject
to license but not assignment.  Require
consent from vocalist as author to create derivative works.  Practice of stripping out parts of sound
recording to have only the voice—but the work is intended as an integrated
whole; would require use of the integrated whole, consistent w/idea of what
joint work is in the first place.
[This paper has an interesting dialogue w/Lunney’s
paper.  Why would a vocalist still sign
these contracts in the digital age?  And
I don’t mean to suggest that they’re necessarily foolish to do so! Maybe we
still have some non-© chokepoints based on legacy industry structure? What would
you say to someone who claims that digital distribution will solve your
problems of bad contracts.] [Not sure these treatments of uses in advertising are
inequities: if someone owns the © in any work and licenses it for ad use, the non-owner
creator is out of luck, right? Maybe a practical difference in recognizability]

A: use counter to vocalist’s personal values.  Digital simply hasn’t changed the inequities
to date. The labels are consolidated into 3; at the end of the day because they
monopolize a lot of distribution, artists still sign w/them.  Independent route is harder, costly to get
your music heard above the fray.

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2017 IPSC Conference at Cardozo School of Law

Usual disclaimers; there were lots of overlaps where I had to make tough choices, and I favored presentations where I hadn’t previously commented on drafts.
Day 1 Breakout Session I
Trademark Doctrine
Mapping Confusion – Mark. P. McKenna & Rebecca Tushnet
Problem with LOC test. 
Courts use the multifactor test. 
Developed for a particular purpose: infringement in cases that didn’t
involve directly competing goods, but related goods; and overwhelmingly in word
mark/logo cases.  They’ve become a
multipurpose tool in every sort of TM case, regardless of the theory of
confusion and regardless of context.  One
reason that happened is that 20th c. courts collapsed a whole bunch
of different forms of unfair competition claims into TM w/o much consideration
of nuances.  Among other things—papered
over significant conceptual differences b/t types of claims. Lost sight of use
as heuristic, rather than end in itself. 
Detached from sense of what they’re supposed to be measuring.  At the end, court shakes a magic 8-ball and
tells you which factors matter.  7th
Circuit cases: reason, reason, reason, conclusion.
The LOC test is supposed to be measuring something other
than itself. When it doesn’t measure that thing, it’s become detached from its
conceptual anchor. Cts implicitly understand that and may truncate the test or
abandon it altogether (Rogers/nominative fair use).  That seems awfully ad hoc.  What is the theory about which factors should
apply when?  What is the theory for which
theories of infringement should be used? 
Cracker Barrel restaurants; Kraft’s preexisting processed cheese product
Cracker Barrel.  Raises questions about
priority in different markets, but 7th Cir. treats it in
conventional source confusion ways—whether people will think it’s the same
thing as the restaurant, then says that restaurants differ from cheese.
Entirely ignores co-branding (e.g. TGIF frozen foods)—straightforward
sponsorship confusion claim. Can also see this in IIC cases or reverse
confusion—Gibson guitar—court just says we won’t go there b/c it scares us;
could swallow up the rest of confusion b/c in most case it’s reasonable to ask
whether some people might wonder about source when they saw a thing.
Paper attempts to do descriptive mapping: you say LOC is the
test for infringement, but in fact you’re not doing that.  Sometimes we can justify that—NFU.  But it’s not just theories of infringement
but also context—trade dress cases differ from word mark cases, especially in
product configuration—increasing emphasis on labeling, contextual aspects that
don’t show up in other cases. 
Prescriptive: whether it makes sense to explicitly break apart some
other categories.
Examples: sensible to say we ought to treat trade dress
cases differently, for the same reason we would’ve once treated them as unfair
competition claims.  Ought to treat them
differently from word mark and logos; we’ve lost something by refusing to
consider ontology (at least claiming to).
RT: Rogers as proof of concept.  You don’t need and in fact don’t have a
unitary likelihood of confusion test—the 2d Circuit’s recent treatment of
nominative fair use notwithstanding.  One
payoff: break out trade dress again, not in protectability but rather in
infringement.
Dan Burk: is this a paper about LOC or a paper about how
courts do things?  It could be said about
Fed. Cir. and doctrine of equivalents, or 9th Cir. and idea/expression.  This is what courts do w/tests.
McKenna: it’s about confusion too—how we ought to think
about confusion assertions.  Right now P
picks theories of confusion and one sticks (maybe), as if there’s nothing about
those theories that fits a particular pattern of case.
Q: Restatement of TM? 
After claim preclusion case, having PTO issue studies/working papers
about how they might want confusion issues analyzed in different
contexts—litigators might have different perspective.  Institutional way of thinking.
McKenna: that’s a bigger Q even than this paper. Believes
should be done by courts, in part b/c Congress would not do well. Common law
process has produced lessons that have been ignored/forgotten; we are trying to
catch the patterns. Don’t want to let TM Ps tell us what they want.
Jennifer Rothman: Instead of unitary tests, we need lots of
different tests?  Do we need a unitary concept
We lose sight of what we’re actually trying to figure out, which is
whether consumers are going to be confused [RT: and act on it]. Could more
tests worsen that?  Second, you throw NFU
and Rogers into the bucket, which are defenses not prima facie case—even if
it’s confusing, we might let it go.
McKenna: Rogers is a nice example. What courts have done is
recognize pattern of cases—deviate from LOC factors and ask a different set of
questions, doesn’t bear much relationship to LOC multifactor test. It’s not a
defense; it’s a mode of analysis for a particular type of case.  That’s not the only example, but there are
other patterns and we should make that explicit. Part of the cost of using the
multifactor test is that we have obscured that. 
And it has also obscured, confusion about what?  Let’s be more careful
about what we’re trying to measure and test. 
Not about proliferation of tests but sometimes truncating the factors.
This analysis might lead more naturally to double identity—same mark and same
goods, no point in doing LOC test.  Old
tests: only thing they really measured was similarity of marks, b/c competition
was required. The LOC multifactor test was created because that got blown up.
There are pockets that demand different approaches.
Jake Linford: Error costs v. administrative costs.  Do you approach this is concreteness about
deviating from multifactor tests, or do you want offramps for different issues,
like IIC or post-sale confusion.  You may
have to wait for courts to follow things like Kozinski’s NFU test. Which courts
should be the innovators?
McKenna: not the 7th Cir.  Functionality law has crystallized around a
pretty clear set of rules (except Fed. Cir.). 
Most cases now have converged on results, w/slightly different
terminology. This can happen and in some contexts is happening. We should build
some conceptual coherence about it so it’s less ad hocery.
Graeme Dinwoodie: One thing that happened w/double identity
was collapse into confusion analysis, but w/burdens of proof. Maybe what it
highlights is whether you want to categorize types of case by type of use or by
reference to the type of harm at issue. If you do the latter, which might be
what IIC is about, you might have a vehicle in Lexmark for doing that in the courts. 
McKenna: There’s overlap in type of use/type of harm, but
we’re trying to do both. We shouldn’t pretend that all assertions of harm are
the same.
Deborah Gerhardt: type of mark too, descriptive v.
suggestive?
Copyright Doctrine
Copyright’s Transformation – Glynn S. Lunney, Jr.
Analog drove a lot in © that we don’t even think about
today: natural monopoly economics predominate b/c of costs of distribution.
Digital era: no longer true.  Example of
duration: book would be distributed and then go out of print. Duration didn’t
matter b/c the book wasn’t going to be printed again. Similarly w/derivative
work. High capital costs to make one film from a book. Public performance:
broadcasting networks had limited bandwidth. Digital changes the high fixed
costs/low marginal costs of natural monopoly environment.
All the re-users were natural monopolies—broadcasting networks.  License fees are not passed on to consumers:
TV station needs license from ASCAP/BMI, that won’t change the number of ads
per hour they run.  Derivative works
licensing costs to author won’t change cost of movie ticket. A prospect theory
of © made sense: assign rights to initial owner and allow them to decide on
exploitation.  Without a natural
monopoly, © itself becomes the monopoly. The reason we only have a couple of
digital performance services is b/c there is a DPR and you need permissions
from lots of © owners. We almost had widespread webcasting, but we don’t.  Films: took 40 years to get a good Star Wars
sequel after Empire, but for the Long
Island Lolita case we got 3 films quickly, each from a different person’s
perspective.
Prices of 50 best books from 19th c/20th
c.  In paper world, average cost was
$9/copy for © works, a bit lower for not-in-©. 
For digital, average cost was $10 for ©; $0 for not-in-©.  Electrons cost less than trees but consumers
are still asked to pay more (transferring their surplus). Getting less (no
right to transfer, give to library) but being charged more.
Value-based v. cost-based pricing. Imagine a world w/just 2
products, food and music.  Imagine: each
consumer has $100 endowment and identical preferences, and cost of each is $10.
If everything is cost-based, then consumers spend $10 on food and $10 on music
and keep $80.  If music is value-based
while food remains cost-based b/c it’s competitive market, consumers will have
to pay $90.  If society gets wealthier
and consumers have $120, all that value goes to the industry. © is thus a tax
on the full value of everything created by society. What happens if food
technology improves and becomes cheaper—do farmers get to keep the surplus? No,
b/c it’s competitive/cost-based market. That money goes to the music sector
too.
Result of digital age: overestimate social cost of lost
incentives and underestimate social cost of lost access.
In the 90s, when we gave the music industry all that money,
we don’t see response to incentives we would have expected under conventional
theory.
RT: Wouldn’t that tax on innovation still exist if food were
competitive regardless?  It goes to
consumers or music industry.
Lunney: yes; he’s just trying to point out what it really
means to say that the value-based pricing is fine, you can just charge what the
market will bear.
Q: if people save instead of spending, does that factor
in?  What about infringement factoring
in, where people refuse to pay and use other means? Does that make it more like
cost-based?
Lunney: I’ve set it up as perfect price discrimination by
having step demand function and uniform preferences; in the real world no
value-based system works that way and some will be more effective at price
discrimination than others. So some will remain in consumers’ pockets.  There’s no cap on how much value-based industries
can capture in the model, whereas in the real world you can’t.  [Also b/c in the real world eventually the peasants
will revolt, which has some conceptual relationship to torrenting.]
Rosenblatt: demand issues—insatiable hunger for more Star Trek stuff, but maybe not for more
copies of a particular Star Trek movie. 
Can you account for that?
Lunney: that’s about the costs of licensing, which are
treated as if they were still analog.
Incentivizing Conceptual Art Through Social Norms—Guy A. Rub
Multiple copy model (Harry Potter) and single copy model
(Guernica).  Books have to control
copying b/c this is where the money is made, whereas Picasso’s money isn’t in
copies; copies are inferior substitutes, so all he needs is personal property
law, not copyright law.  Conceptual art
is somewhere in the middle.  Definition: “Art
in which the concepts or ideas take precedence over traditional aesthetic
concerns. This means the idea is important but the execution is a perfunctory
affair.” Value is opposite place from where © locates it.  MOMA paid a lot for Duchamp’s shovel (In
Advance of the Broken Arm)—no different to the art world than paying a lot for
Guernica.  What do you do if there’s no
specific object attached to the work of art? 
Consider Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
(1991): It’s instructions.  175 pounds of
cellophane-wrapped candies, visitors invited to take candy, museum replenishes
the taken candies every day.  It has a
meaning: 175 pounds was the weight Ross, his partner, was when he was healthy
and not dying of AIDS; the candies are the diminishment of the disease.  But what color, shape, size is the work? None
of this is defined.  Can be piled in a
corner, put on the floor in a rectangle, used to form a line that encircles the
museum.  Where is the © protection, even
setting aside the fixation issue?  None
of it is protected.  What does he sell?
He sells the idea.  A similar work by the
same artist sold for $8 million.  What
did the museum buy?  Not the candies, and
not the ©.  Nonetheless, descriptions do
bear © notices in the name of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.  The foundation claims to own © in “all works
by Gonzalez-Torres” (some of his work has more physical components).
Curators say: these works are “owned,” typically by a museum,
but it’s difficult to explain what is owned. They wouldn’t imagine presenting
them w/o a lending agreement from the museum that “owns” them. Otherwise this
would be “fake” or “forged.” Even though it’s the curator at the “borrowing”
museum that decides the shape and arrangement of the candies.  In addition, get permission from relevant
artist/foundation. Lending museum generally requires it, and even if not, we
will do it. A “heavily inspired” work doesn’t need any of this. If the level of
copying is artistically justifiable (“if it’s good”) we won’t ask for
permission—curators even had a difficult time understanding the question.  “Copies” by individuals are sometimes
perceived differently.
Artists have weapons in their arsenal to control works w/o
law—Richard Prince says he doesn’t his like his 1980s work any more, doesn’t
represent him as an artist. Some museums won’t show it any more, others
will.  Lost at least some value.  He created a work for Ivanka Trump, then
disowned it. 
Takeaways: strong gatekeepers/strong enough social norms:
art world create a de facto in rem right in public ideas—private ordering steps
in, but it mimics legal language of ownership/licensing.  Thin and flexible right, doesn’t seem to
cover personal copies or derivative works. 
The museum trusts the foundation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres b/c the person
who runs it knew him well. Notion of exhaustion isn’t followed; artist and
foundation are keepers of authenticity. Legal rights from VARA are limited but
powered by community norms. Artists have leverage over “property” owner.
Q: What about the story behind the art? What gives it
meaning is the reason that the candies are there and that they weigh 175 lbs.
Isn’t that protectable expression?
A: I would push back on that. Those are facts. 
Q: isn’t the candy the expression of the story?  Undefined, but still.  The story that goes along w/it could limit
the explanation others might offer.
A: context gives it power, yes
RT: Conceptual appropriation art: Did you ask them what
would happen if I titled a pile of candy “After Felix Gonzalez-Torres”?
A: Asked them about appropriation art, though not this
precise question.  They said they were
happy with having appropriation art in their museums, so if it met that
definition they’d be fine w/it.
Q: what would be the advantage of copying w/o
permission?  It wouldn’t necessarily
allow them to charge less for admission. 
What happens to the rogue gatekeeper? 
Will donations collapse?
A: they’d excommunicate the rogue. They’d say this isn’t
art.
Perzanowski: Do they think they’re following the law?
A: Talking to their lawyers is next step, but his sense is
that yes, they think they’re using legal concepts. [Which is consistent w/other
things we know about how people tend to think that the law is what they think
is just.]
Revisiting (Moral) Rights for IP-Wronged Music Vocalists—Tuneen
E. Chisolm
Followup to earlier paper about ownership interests of music
vocalists—seen up close inequities that are visited on vocalists because of
industry practices/©.  This piece looks
at moral rights justification for proposed © solutions.  Can they fill the gap for absence of moral
rights protection for non-visual artists. 
It’s a contract issue, but also a bargaining power issue.  Different rights for sound recordings;
non-economic inequities from involuntary associations, such as political
campaigns, advertising, sampling, objectionable soundtracks.  ROP: Hasn’t worked for vocalists when their
actual recordings were used under license. 
Could address inequities w/moral right of integrity, but also wants to
explore whether © could do the job if © protected a fixed performance as an
applied composition, w/vocalist as author & full bundle of rights, subject
to license but not assignment.  Require
consent from vocalist as author to create derivative works.  Practice of stripping out parts of sound
recording to have only the voice—but the work is intended as an integrated
whole; would require use of the integrated whole, consistent w/idea of what
joint work is in the first place.
[This paper has an interesting dialogue w/Lunney’s
paper.  Why would a vocalist still sign
these contracts in the digital age?  And
I don’t mean to suggest that they’re necessarily foolish to do so! Maybe we
still have some non-© chokepoints based on legacy industry structure? What would
you say to someone who claims that digital distribution will solve your
problems of bad contracts.] [Not sure these treatments of uses in advertising are
inequities: if someone owns the © in any work and licenses it for ad use, the non-owner
creator is out of luck, right? Maybe a practical difference in recognizability]

A: use counter to vocalist’s personal values.  Digital simply hasn’t changed the inequities
to date. The labels are consolidated into 3; at the end of the day because they
monopolize a lot of distribution, artists still sign w/them.  Independent route is harder, costly to get
your music heard above the fray.

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Transformative work of the day, Richard Siken edition

The Siken Bot tweets lines from Richard Siken poems at 30-minute intervals.  And after following it for a few days, I find that I do see Siken’s poetry differently.  At this point I’m not even sure whether I like it less or more, but the tweets highlight his use of specific techniques, especially repetition, and  yet contrast sharply with the full poems, which have more room to use those techniques in service of a larger effect.

Other thoughts?

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false patent marking falls w/false advertising claim

Infinity Headwear & Apparel, LLC v. Jay Franco &
Sons, Inc., 2017 WL 3309724, No. 15-CV-1259 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 2, 2017)
Infinity sued Jay Franco for patent infringement, false
marking, and false advertising.  Infinity
has U.S. Patent No. 8,864,544, “Hooded Blanket and Stuffed Toy Combination,”
directed to “a blanket having a hood comprising an ornamental surface, wherein
upon stowing the body of the blanket within an interior volume of the hood, a
stuffed toy is provided.”

(I personally think this is the stuff(ed animal) of nightmares.) Franco’s allegedly infringing product is a “[w]earable
[s]tuffed [a]nimal,” called “Janimals”:
The key question on patent infringement was whether the Jay
Franco product had the “blanket” limitation of the claims; the court denied
summary judgment to Infinity on the question of whether the accused products,
which Franco previously described as “full body ‘onesie’ type garments,” were
“blankets.”
False marking/false advertising: Franco’s products were
marked with the words, “Worldwide patent pending,” but that’s not true (despite
an early failed attempt to patent). To bring suit under the false marking
statute, a plaintiff must have “suffered a competitive injury as a result of a
violation” of the marking statute. A competitive injury is “[a] wrongful
economic loss caused by a commercial rival, such as the loss of sales due to
unfair competition; a disadvantage in a plaintiff’s ability to compete with a
defendant, caused by the defendant’s unfair competition.”
Infinity relied on testimony from Jay Franco’s president
that the false marking was important because it indicated exclusivity, which
was valuable in selling to retailers and created a market advantage.  However, the president’s personal belief in
potential market benefits was insufficient. Gravelle v. Kaba Ilco Corp., the
Federal Circuit recently concluded that such speculative testimony from a plaintiff was insufficient to establish
the causal nexus between false marking and competitive injury. No. 2016-2318,
2017 WL 1349278, at *4 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 12, 2017) (per curiam) (nonprecedential).
 The court here saw no difference in the defendant’s subjective belief.  Infinity must offer evidence “to support the
causal proposition, which is anything but obvious, that buyers actually
purchased the ‘patent pending’ [products] over [Infinity’s products]—or would
have bought [Infinity’s products] (as opposed to either [Franco’s] or someone
else’s) had [Franco] not falsely stated ‘patent pending.’ ”

The same analysis applied to proximate cause under Lexmark for the false advertising claim. 

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#1 is puffery, but 2-to-1 preference claims aren’t

Trex Co. v. CPG Int’l LLC, No. 17-cv-00005, 2017 WL 3272013
(W.D. Va. Aug. 1, 2017)
Trex sued defendant AZEK, its major competitor in the
wood-alternative decking industry, for false advertising.  Trex has the largest market share and largest
amount of gross sales in this industry, ahead of AZEK by a substantial margin.
With another two or three companiees, they comprise at least 85% of the market,
but there are also a number of smaller competitors. The wood-alternative
decking industry is apparently also known as the “premium decking” industry.
The court found that most of the challenged claims were
puffery, but that one was potentially misleading; a preliminary injunction was
denied for want of evidence of consumer deception.
AZEK claimed to be “the #1 in Premium Decking” and “Number
One in Premium Decking.” The paragraphs below the statements referenced “the
best high-performance building materials available,” AZEK’s “commitment to
technology and materials science innovation,” and “our dedication to inspiring
design and style.” AZEK advertised that “TimberTech Is the #1 Provider in
Design Preference,” following the question, “Looking to build your dream deck?”
in a Facebook ad.  AZEK’s CEO also stated
at a trade show and in a press release that AZEK is “the preferred premium
leader in the categories where we offer products.” AZEK likewise claimed to be
“the leader in performance, aesthetics, and innovation” and referenced “the
best warranties in the industry.” AZEK also advertised that TimberTech “is a
preferred choice 2-to-1 over the competition,” without specific reference to
sales volume or market share.   
The court first rejected Trex’s argument that the court
should consider all the statements together, as part of one ad campaign.  Instead, it evaluated each separately.  The #1 statements were puffery, even though
they identified the relevant industry; the use of “design preference” was just
an additional vague term and didn’t convert the puffery into a factual
statement.  The statements didn’t refer
to sales or come in a context referring to sales or any other specific measure,
and they didn’t provide an identifiable person or group who determined that
AZEK was #1.  Even the nearby presence of
AZEK’s claim that it is “#1 in performance trim,” where AZEK was apparently the
market sales leader, didn’t matter—the #1 statements were all “simply too vague
to be meaningful at all.”  So too with
the “leader” statements, which didn’t identify a measure in which the company
leads, such as warranty offerings, variety of products offered, or sales volume.
The “2-to-1” statements, however, were more specific.  Giving a ratio “implies that there is some
data to back up the claim,” making them “less vague and more empirical.” And
the ratio wasn’t so high that a consumer couldn’t reasonably rely on it. Although
sales wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the claim, “the use of the word ‘preferred
choice,’ especially when combined with the reasonable ratio given, states a
sufficient factual statement that can be false, or at least misleading.”

Still, the court found the statement to be ambiguous.  Trex argued that “the competition”
necessarily means all of AZEK’s competitors in the alternative wood decking
industry, which would make the claim false. But if “the competition” referred to
only some of the minor players in the market, then it would be true. “While
this is a strained reading of the statement, and perhaps even an unlikely
interpretation, it is also technically true.” 
But ambiguity shouldn’t be found just because some “strained” readings
can be found—they should be at least equally plausible, according to the cases
that discuss similar strained readings. 
Anyway, no PI.

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#1 is puffery, but 2-to-1 preference claims aren’t

Trex Co. v. CPG Int’l LLC, No. 17-cv-00005, 2017 WL 3272013
(W.D. Va. Aug. 1, 2017)
Trex sued defendant AZEK, its major competitor in the
wood-alternative decking industry, for false advertising.  Trex has the largest market share and largest
amount of gross sales in this industry, ahead of AZEK by a substantial margin.
With another two or three companiees, they comprise at least 85% of the market,
but there are also a number of smaller competitors. The wood-alternative
decking industry is apparently also known as the “premium decking” industry.
The court found that most of the challenged claims were
puffery, but that one was potentially misleading; a preliminary injunction was
denied for want of evidence of consumer deception.
AZEK claimed to be “the #1 in Premium Decking” and “Number
One in Premium Decking.” The paragraphs below the statements referenced “the
best high-performance building materials available,” AZEK’s “commitment to
technology and materials science innovation,” and “our dedication to inspiring
design and style.” AZEK advertised that “TimberTech Is the #1 Provider in
Design Preference,” following the question, “Looking to build your dream deck?”
in a Facebook ad.  AZEK’s CEO also stated
at a trade show and in a press release that AZEK is “the preferred premium
leader in the categories where we offer products.” AZEK likewise claimed to be
“the leader in performance, aesthetics, and innovation” and referenced “the
best warranties in the industry.” AZEK also advertised that TimberTech “is a
preferred choice 2-to-1 over the competition,” without specific reference to
sales volume or market share.   
The court first rejected Trex’s argument that the court
should consider all the statements together, as part of one ad campaign.  Instead, it evaluated each separately.  The #1 statements were puffery, even though
they identified the relevant industry; the use of “design preference” was just
an additional vague term and didn’t convert the puffery into a factual
statement.  The statements didn’t refer
to sales or come in a context referring to sales or any other specific measure,
and they didn’t provide an identifiable person or group who determined that
AZEK was #1.  Even the nearby presence of
AZEK’s claim that it is “#1 in performance trim,” where AZEK was apparently the
market sales leader, didn’t matter—the #1 statements were all “simply too vague
to be meaningful at all.”  So too with
the “leader” statements, which didn’t identify a measure in which the company
leads, such as warranty offerings, variety of products offered, or sales volume.
The “2-to-1” statements, however, were more specific.  Giving a ratio “implies that there is some
data to back up the claim,” making them “less vague and more empirical.” And
the ratio wasn’t so high that a consumer couldn’t reasonably rely on it. Although
sales wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the claim, “the use of the word ‘preferred
choice,’ especially when combined with the reasonable ratio given, states a
sufficient factual statement that can be false, or at least misleading.”

Still, the court found the statement to be ambiguous.  Trex argued that “the competition”
necessarily means all of AZEK’s competitors in the alternative wood decking
industry, which would make the claim false. But if “the competition” referred to
only some of the minor players in the market, then it would be true. “While
this is a strained reading of the statement, and perhaps even an unlikely
interpretation, it is also technically true.” 
But ambiguity shouldn’t be found just because some “strained” readings
can be found—they should be at least equally plausible, according to the cases
that discuss similar strained readings. 
Anyway, no PI.

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Post-Star Athletica question: input sought

Is this shoe design copyrightable, yes or no?  Not just the arrangement of studs, but the overall design.

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A few more ICE tidbits courtesy of FOIA

As the result of ICE’s continued production, I’ve been able to review more from the sample of incidents we sought.  The key takeaways so far have already been covered–TM owners are the source of guidance, and they overreach, but most merchandise that’s seized is not parodic.

You’re not even trying, buddy: this counterfeit authenticity claim is so incoherent that one wonders why they bothered.  Accept no substitute, indeed:

Previously redacted NFL claim that parody/disparaging shirts are counterfeit:
Also, the relevant industry organization, CAPS, claims that counterfeit clothes pose health risks, as evidenced by this picture.  I”m not saying this is attractive storage, but it is in plastic, and I take my clothes into the bathroom (not even wrapped in plastic) all the time:
(CAPS also makes the claim on its website, which represents the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, and collegiate liceonsors, that derogatory, lewd, or offensive uses are counterfeit.)
This series of before and after pictures indicates some selectivity in seizures, which is good.  I note that my Dr. Seuss Slammed I Am T-shirt (which I had, coincidentally, for a number of years before I brought this case) was not seized:
before

before

before
after

seized

after

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