New Issue of IP Law Review Available

Congratulations to the staff of the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review for the completion of a new issue.  All of the articles are available in pdf here.  Outgoing editor-in-chief Laura Steele sends along the following announcement and summary of the issue:

On behalf of the staff of the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review, I am pleased to announce the arrival of the second issue of volume fourteen, available now in print and online.

This issue highlights the work of several scholars. The issue opens with the Thirteenth Annual Helen Wilson Nies Memorial Lecture in Intellectual Property Law. The lecture was given this fall by John F. Duffy, the Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. Professor Duffy has updated and expanded his speech, “Innovation and Recovery,” to reflect recent developments in scholarship and patent law.

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Anyone Interested in a Faculty Blog T-Shirt?

Look around your home and you are sure to find no shortage of cheap promotional items carrying the logo of one business or another.  In fact, I happen to have in front of me right now three pens emblazoned with the names of three different national hotel chains.  None of the hotel chains are especially trendy, so it is hard to imagine that anyone would actually pay a premium to use the pens because of the presence of the trademarks.  But some trademarks do have real cache — think Harley, Starbucks, or BMW — and there might be real money-making opportunities in selling pens, shirts, mugs, and so forth linked to those famous names.  So, you might wonder, would it be legal to start producing  and selling merchandise bearing famous names without first obtaining a license from the trademark owners?

As Irene Calboli explains in a new paper on SSRN, the answer has not been as clearly and satisfactorily worked out by the courts as you might think.  

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Does the Threat of Future Copyright Infringement Amount to Irreparable Harm?

Chief among the bundle of rights one obtains in property ownership is the right to exclude others from the use and enjoyment of that property.  This “sole and despotic dominion” that an individual commands over their property is placed in danger, of course, when the property becomes subject to the wants and needs of others.  Absent the owner’s consent (as in the case of licensing) or operation of law (as with adverse possession), a property owner would be able to bring an action for trespass for such intrusions.

A judge holding a defendant liable for trespass perhaps carries the vision of plaintiffs having their rights vindicated, but cases do not end at liability.  The judge must also determine whether further remedies beyond damages are appropriate, including whether a permanent injunction should issue.  Such is a weighty decision touches upon an extraordinary remedy: a court order that a defendant must cease and desist its illegal activity or face punishment for contempt.   That being said, in many property cases, a court order only issuing damages would effectuate a judicial licensing of the behavior.  With that result, the incentives are adjusted such that the right to exclude does not rest with the plaintiff; instead, it is determined only by the extent to which the defendant is willing and able to engage in the trespassing behavior.  As such, the courts have presumptively treated infringement of property rights as worthy of injunctive relief.

That has also been the rule in copyright infringement cases for the last few decades. 

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