Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Keith Hylton, ‘Patents and Incentives to Assign, License, or Litigate’
ABSTRACT This paper presents a model of the activity of patent intermediaries and potential infringers in a system of costly patent litigation. Because the intermediary, in comparison to the inventor, has a more credible threat to sue, both the revenue from infringement litigation and the intrinsic value of the patent are greater in the intermediary’s […]
Avantika Wasnik, ‘Copyright, Male Gaze and the Commercial Afterlife of the Image’
ABSTRACT Copyright law does not create the male gaze or protect objectification as an idea. Its significance arises when representations structured through that gaze are fixed in films, photographs and promotional works and become capable of repeated commercial exploitation. Situated at the intersection of feminist film theory and UK copyright law, this article examines that […]
Choi and Kim, ‘The Right to Resell Digital Goods’
ABSTRACT Digital goods are typically sold as durable but non-transferable access rights, with digital rights management (DRM) preventing resale. Should policy restore resale rights? In a two-period model, resale insures early buyers and reallocates copies, but diverts future transactions from the platform. Under independent valuations, the platform never prefers an active secondary market, even when […]
‘What has long arms and lives in Switzerland? The cross-border injunction club gains a new member’
One and a half years after the CJEU’s BSH v Electrolux decision (C-339/22, Katpost here), patent litigation in Europe looks very different. To recall the fundamental finding of this decision, the CJEU confirmed that a court that has jurisdiction under Article 4(1) of the Brussels Regulation (recast) regarding the infringement of a foreign patent does […]
Timothy McFarlin, ‘Ending the Adverse Possession of Authorship’
ABSTRACT This is the first article to cohesively identify, analyze, and argue against a pernicious doctrine within US copyright law: the adverse possession of authorship. Its tendrils have spread through three decades of case law, effectively stripping people of their legal status as authors and shifting it to others who did not create what they […]
Mezei and Härkönen, ‘Intellectual Property Law and Upcycling – Towards a Sustainable Transformativeness?’
ABSTRACT Upcycling is an increasingly important practice within the circular economy, particularly in the fashion and creative industries, where discarded or underused goods are transformed into products with a new function or added value. Yet, when the source materials embody intellectual property (IP), upcycling may conflict with the exclusive rights of copyright, trademark, and design […]
Career Development Fellow in Intellectual Property Law – Durham Law School
Durham Law School is recruiting a Career Development Fellow in Intellectual Property Law. This fixed-term role offers an excellent opportunity for an early-career academic to develop an independent research profile while contributing to the teaching of Intellectual Property Law across undergraduate (LLB) and postgraduate taught (PGT) programmes. Full details, application information and contacts for enquiries […]
‘German Court Decides US Copyright Claims’
The training of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) models on copyrighted works, such as books, articles, and songs, has produced disputes about the legality of the use of the works for such a purpose if the training occurs without permission or a license from the copyright owners. Copyright owners and their representatives have now sued AI companies […]
‘The risk of unclear contract terms and evidentiary deficiencies to entitlement claims’
Contracts play a critical role in clarifying the ownership and transfer of IP, but frequently define the IP with reference to broad and non-specific terms. A recent Australian Patent Office decision in ThermoChem Recovery International Inc v FULC JV LLC [2026] APO 14 highlights how inadequate evidence of the specifics of the contract provisions and […]
Peter Yu, ‘Six Decades of Intellectual Property and Global Development’
ABSTRACT This chapter revisits the debate on intellectual property and global development and explores how we can better harness the intellectual property system, both domestic and international, to promote such development. It begins by reviewing the various contributions provided by the Intellectual Property Conference of Stockholm in 1967 and the United Nations Declaration on the […]