Monthly Archives: February, 2025
‘A Shambles: Rinkoff v Baby Cow Productions; is the format of a show a protectable copyright work?’
In a recent decision, the UK IPEC has considered whether the format of a comedy show can be protectable as a dramatic work in copyright. The claim was brought by Joshua Rinkoff (the ‘Claimant’) for copyright infringement of a comedy show he wrote, produced and acted in called ‘Shambles’. The premise of the show was […]
Michael FitzGerald, ‘Not hollowed by a Delphic frenzy: European intermediary liability from the perspective of a bad man: A response to Martin Husovec et al’
ABSTRACT This article proposes a revisionary interpretation of a decade of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence on online intermediary liability. This interpretation is produced by applying methodological insights from classical legal realist scholars including from Karl Llewellyn and Oliver Wendell Holmes. This article applies Holmes’s famous heuristic device of the ‘bad man’ to […]
Santos, Morozovaite and De Conca, ‘No harm no foul: how harms caused by dark patterns are conceptualised and tackled under EU data protection, consumer and competition laws’
ABSTRACT Although several Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) studies have empirically investigated the harms caused by dark patterns, with policymakers and regulators regarding these harms significant, they have yet to be examined from a legal perspective. This paper identifies the individual, collective, material and non-material harms deriving from dark patterns, dissecting the role that harms play in […]
Talya Deibel, ‘Demarcation problems in law and neurotechnology: persons, cyborgs and neurohackers’
ABSTRACT Technology creates demarcation problems for law, with legal agents existing in a constant state of in-betweenness. Digital and biotechnologies challenge legal definitions by changing our understanding of what constitutes a ‘person’ and what constitutes a ‘thing’. This similarly affects the boundaries between inner–outer, personhood–property, and subject–object distinctions. The result is a plethora of legal […]
Louise Teitz, ‘Harmonizing Private International Law and International Private Law Through Softlaw’
ABSTRACT This article, prepared for a celebration of the career of Professor Symeon Symeonides, the world’s leading Conflict of Laws expert, uses Symeon’s work as a point of departure to consider what role hardlaw and softlaw play in creating and harmonizing private international law. The article looks at ‘softlaw’ generally and then examines several examples […]
Matthew Sipe, ‘Trademasks’
ABSTRACT The accepted purpose of trademark law is to help consumers locate and verify what they want to buy, a task accomplished by linking producers to reputations through marks. Nevertheless, trademark law fully permits the strategic use and non-use of marks by their owners to conceal information rather than reveal it – strategies herein termed […]
Jeff Gordon, ‘Statutory Contracts’
ABSTRACT Private law offers a unique solution to the problem of long-term fiscal commitment. When Congress enacts a spending program that will take many years to reach fruition, there is a risk of a subsequent Congress or President cutting off funding in the interim. There is no escape from the problem within appropriations law itself. […]
D’Onfro and Hwang, ‘Tortious Interference Revisited’
ABSTRACT Tortious interference with contract has bedeviled legal commentators for over a century. It can provide relief in some situations where straightforward contract breach cannot reach. But these claims have also been derided for threatening competition, at-will employment, free speech, and important guardrails on other private law claims. The doctrine is also difficult to square […]
‘A single piece of US copyright: Are AI-generated images original artistic works or banal compilations?’
On 30 January 2025, the US Copyright Office (USCO) registered A Single Piece of American Cheese, a visual material generated by Invoke AI and with a technique called ‘inpainting’. Initially rejected in September 2024, the application was reconsidered after the applicant argued that the work involved sufficient human creativity. The USCO ultimately agreed and registered […]
Choi and Triantis, ‘Designing Contract Modification’
ABSTRACT For long-term commercial contracts, modification tends to be the norm rather than the exception. While modification often takes place in response to an arrival of new information, contracting parties frequently modify the terms in response to a shift in bargaining power. In this paper, we explain how the flexibility to renegotiate in response to […]