Why Intellectual Property is Often (Literally) the “Icing on the Cake”

barbie-cakeI often tell my students that Intellectual Property is like the “icing on the cake”—the “cake” being the structure created by a product or service to which Intellectual Property law (IP) applies.  As I will elaborate in a future post, this is one of the reasons why I like IP so much.  In other words, while the technical application of IP is undoubtedly complicated and challenging, IP is often just the last step of a production or creation process.  It is like the icing on a cake — that final layer that ties everything together.  Yet this layer is absolutely necessary to complete the work and often represents the sine qua non of why the public will buy the cake.  It determines whether a product will be successful or not.  This post, however, is not about IP theory . . . it is really about cakes, icing, and IP.

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2009 Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition Winners

musical_notessvgEvery year, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sponsors the Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition, named after the lawyer who founded ASCAP in 1914. The competition awards prizes at accredited law schools across the country for the best one or two papers in any area of copyright law at that law school. I am very pleased to announce this year’s winners of the competition at Marquette:

  • First Prize: William K. Pridemore II, Foul Ball! Why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Strikes Out on Fair Use
  • Second Prize: Kevin P. Rizzuto, Just Say No (to Injunctions Enjoining Future Sale or Lease of Copyrighted Residential Homes)

First prize carries with it an award of $600, and second prize is awarded $250. Congratulations to Will and Kevin!

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MULS 2009 Works-In-Progress Workshop (June Session)

champTo open my month as faculty blogger, I would first like to thank my colleague Michael O’Hear, whose dedication to, and work for, the Marquette Faculty Blog since its creation last summer have been incredible.  This is very much one of the major reasons why this project has been so successful and brought so many wonderful contributions to so many aspects of the law so far.

Another fundamental area where the Marquette Law School faculty is also showing important contributions to the law is the production of scholarship that results in law review articles, book chapters, textbooks, etc.  We often present and discuss these works when they are still in progress in conferences around the country with our colleagues in our areas at other schools.  Still, to facilitate even further these very important discussions, the MULS Academic Programs Committee, led by Professor Chad Oldfather, has organized two sessions of an in-house Works-in-Progress Workshop for June and July.

The June session was a great success. A group of eight of us met this past Wednesday and presented our works-in-progress, from very rough to more completed drafts of scholarship, to our colleagues participating in the program. 

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