Monthly Archives: August, 2024
Zaneta Robinson, ‘Trademark Law as an Accessory to Language Death’
ABSTRACT Nearly 3,000 languages could disappear before the end of the century – at a rate of one every two weeks – according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Linguists and other scholars maintain that language, particularly words, are a key component of culture and heritage. Words can also serve as […]
Call for Papers: Trusts, Wealth Management and Philanthropy Conference, University of Hong Kong, 3-4 July 2025
The Conference marks the 10th anniversary of the Trusts, Wealth Management and Philanthropy Conference Series. It will focus on Trust and Innovative Philanthropy, exploring key themes such as: 1. Innovations and Developments in Chinese Charity Law, 2. New Perspectives in Philanthropy – novel research and practices in the philanthropic sector which provide impactful perspectives on philanthropic models, […]
Sean Seymore, ‘Patent Law’s Role in Protecting Public Health’
ABSTRACT Innumerable inventions implicate public health – including drugs, vaccines, dietary supplements, and sewage treatment plants. Over the past century, the Patent Office and the courts have modulated the ability to obtain or enforce patents for these inventions – whether in response to a public health crisis or to protect the credulous public from unscrupulous […]
Ana Rački Marinković, ‘Liability for AI-related IP infringements in the European Union’
ABSTRACT As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology develops and more AI systems are put on the market, concern about the implications of such AI systems on humans is growing. A particular area of concern is the impact of AI systems on intellectual property rights (IPRs) as infringement might occur in relation to the use of AI […]
Katarzyna Kryla-Cudna, ‘The update obligation for smart products under the EU Sale of Goods Directive: the seller’s right of redress and the CISG’
ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of the overlap between the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the rules governing the final seller’s right of redress adopted in the European Union’s (EU) 2019 Sale of Goods Directive (SGD). In this context, the article focuses on the seller’s update […]
Christopher Newman, ‘Getting Possessive About Data: Why Cloud Storage Isn’t Really Like Bailment’
ABSTRACT This essay engages with recent scholarly suggestions that the traditional property categories of possession, bailment, and conversion can and should be applied in a fairly straightforward manner to storage of digital data. On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the concerns underlying these proposals, and agree that digital files meet the basic criteria […]
Jacqueline Charlesworth, ‘Generative AI’s Illusory Case for Fair Use’
ABSTRACT Pointing to Google Books, HathiTrust, Sega and other technology-driven fair use precedents, AI companies and those who advocate for their interests claim that mass unauthorized reproduction of books, music, photographs, visual art, news articles and other copyrighted works to train generative AI systems is a fair use of those works. Though acknowledging that works […]
Dimitrios Devetzis, ‘The Role of Private Law in Sustainable Development: Improving Sustainability through an Effective Anagnosis of US Contract Law’
ABSTRACT Sustainability is often seen as a problematic which does not involve social sciences and – mainly – the law, the role of which is many times limited to some restriction measures enacted through public law provisions, in order to set up the limits of non-environmental friendly practices and enact some prohibitions. Nevertheless, private law, […]
‘OpenAI’s granted large language model (LLM) patents’
OpenAI’s approach to IP is often cited in the tech industry as an example of a radically new approach to IP. OpenAI has the reputation for protecting its innovations through the use of trade secrets as opposed to patents. However, it appears that this characterisation of OpenAI’s strategy is years out of date. This is […]
Nicholas Mouttotos, ‘The UNIDROIT Principles on International Commercial Contracts and sustainable development’
ABSTRACT A number of motivations currently drive multinational corporations to the inclusion, monitoring, and enforcement of contract requirements for sustainability. These can be either as a result of investor demand for environment, social, and governance policies; regulatory requirements for inclusion of such contract stipulations; or the increasing litigation for conduct leading to environmental harm, but […]