Ideas are the fuel of industry and the entertainment business. Likewise, manufacturers receive suggestions for new products or improvements to existing products, and retailers frequently receive ideas for new marketing campaigns. Many ideas are not new and may be used by anyone without the risk of incurring any legal liability, but some ideas are novel and valuable. If the originator of a potentially useful idea does not have the financial resources to exploit the idea, he or she may submit it to another, with the expectation of receiving compensation if the idea is used. Although an extensive body of intellectual property law exists to protect the rights of inventors, authors, and businesses that own valuable brands or confidential proprietary information, raw ideas receive no protection. Nevertheless, the originator of a potentially useful and marketable idea is not without legal recourse. The courts have developed, through a long line of common law precedents, legal protection for novel and concrete ideas under certain circumstances. The originator of an idea can rely on contract law, whereby the recipient may expressly or impliedly agree to pay for the idea. Alternatively, if the idea is disclosed in confidence, its unauthorized use by the recipient allows the originator of the idea to recover compensation. Finally, some courts have treated the ownership of ideas as quasi-property rights.

This book examines the development of the concept of intellectual property in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Cass and Hylton explain how technological advances strengthen the case for intellectual property laws, and argue convincingly that IP laws help create a wealthier, more successful, more innovative society than alternative legal systems. Ignoring the social value of IP rights and making what others create “free” would be a costly mistake indeed.

While innovative ideas and creative works increasingly drive economic success, the historic approach to encouraging innovation and creativity by granting property rights has come under attack by a growing number of legal theorists and technologists. In Laws of Creation, Ronald Cass and Keith Hylton take on these critics with a vigorous defense of intellectual property law. The authors look closely at the IP doctrines that have been developed over many years in patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret law. In each area, legislatures and courts have weighed the benefits that come from preserving incentives to innovate against the costs of granting innovators a degree of control over specific markets. Over time, the authors show, a set of rules has emerged that supports wealth-creating innovation while generally avoiding overly expansive, growth-retarding licensing regimes. These rules are now under pressure from detractors who claim that changing technology undermines the case for intellectual property rights. But Cass and Hylton explain how technological advances only strengthen that case. In their view, the easier it becomes to copy innovations, the harder to detect copies and to stop copying, the greater the disincentive to invest time and money in inventions and creative works. The authors argue convincingly that intellectual property laws help create a society that is wealthier and inspires more innovation than those of alternative legal systems. Ignoring the social value of intellectual property rights and making what others create and nurture “free” would be a costly mistake indeed.

This book is designed specifically to provide business, paralegal, legal studies or other non-law school students with a comprehensive understanding of the principal areas of intellectual property protection: trade secrets, patents, copyrights, trademarks, and the right of publicity, as well as treatment of legal protection for other valuable intangibles and international intellectual property issues. Each chapter includes summaries of the law and excerpted cases to illustrate the application of legal rules and concepts. Applicable statutory provisions are excerpted and included for quick reference. The cases are followed by a variety of questions and comments to prompt classroom discussion, and each chapter concludes with an extensive set of discussion problems and a case study. Also accompanying each chapter are a set of writing and practical exercises to enhance student written and critical thinking skills, and to provide experiential learning as to specific tasks involved in securing and protecting intellectual property rights.

Presents the federal law on trademark, copyright, and patents and key state law doctrines such as trade secrets, rights in ideas, and rights of publicity. This book introduces applications, problems, and perspectives within the context of traditional IP principles. It also integrates IP case law, theory, and statutes in the contexts for its use.

Leading scholars of intellectual property and information policy examine what the common law can contribute to discussions about intellectual property's scope, structure and function.

A comprehensive overview of intellectual property law, this handbook will be a vital read for all invested in the field of IP law. Topics include the foundations of IP law; its emergence and development in various jurisdictions; its rules and principles; and current issues arising from the existence and operation of IP law in a political economy.

This book takes a fresh look at the most dynamic area of American law today, comprising the fields of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrecy, publicity rights, and misappropriation. Topics range from copyright in private letters to defensive patenting of business methods, from moral rights in the visual arts to the banking of trademarks, from the impact of the court of patent appeals to the management of Mickey Mouse. The history and political science of intellectual property law, the challenge of digitization, the many statutes and judge-made doctrines, and the interplay with antitrust principles are all examined. The treatment is both positive (oriented toward understanding the law as it is) and normative (oriented to the reform of the law). Previous analyses have tended to overlook the paradox that expanding intellectual property rights can effectively reduce the amount of new intellectual property by raising the creators' input costs. Those analyses have also failed to integrate the fields of intellectual property law. They have failed as well to integrate intellectual property law with the law of physical property, overlooking the many economic and legal-doctrinal parallels. This book demonstrates the fundamental economic rationality of intellectual property law, but is sympathetic to critics who believe that in recent decades Congress and the courts have gone too far in the creation and protection of intellectual property rights. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. The Economic Theory of Property 2. How to Think about Copyright 3. A Formal Model of Copyright 4. Basic Copyright Doctrines 5. Copyright in Unpublished Works 6. Fair Use, Parody, and Burlesque 7. The Economics of Trademark Law 8. The Optimal Duration of Copyrights and Trademarks 9. The Legal Protection of Postmodern Art 10. Moral Rights and the Visual Artists Rights Act 11. The Economics of Patent Law 12. The Patent Court: A Statistical Evaluation 13. The Economics of Trade Secrecy Law 14. Antitrust and Intellectual Property 15. The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law Conclusion Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: Chicago law professor William Landes and his polymath colleague Richard Posner have produced a fascinating new book...[The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law] is a broad-ranging analysis of how intellectual property should and does work...Shakespeare's copying from Plutarch, Microsoft's incentives to hide the source code for Windows, and Andy Warhol's right to copyright a Brillo pad box as art are all analyzed, as is the question of the status of the all-bran cereal called 'All-Bran.' --Nicholas Thompson, New York Sun Reviews of this book: Landes and Posner, each widely respected in the intersection of law and economics, investigate the right mix of protection and use of intellectual property (IP)...This volume provides a broad and coherent approach to the economics and law of IP. The economics is important, understandable, and valuable. --R. A. Miller, Choice Intellectual property is the most important public policy issue that most policymakers don't yet get. It is America's most important export, and affects an increasingly wide range of social and economic life. In this extraordinary work, two of America's leading scholars in the law and economics movement test the pretensions of intellectual property law against the rationality of economics. Their conclusions will surprise advocates from both sides of this increasingly contentious debate. Their analysis will help move the debate beyond the simplistic ideas that now tend to dominate. --Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World An image from modern mythology depicts the day that Einstein, pondering a blackboard covered with sophisticated calculations, came to the life-defining discovery: Time = $$. Landes and Posner, in the role of that mythological Einstein, reveal at every turn how perceptions of economic efficiency pervade legal doctrine. This is a fascinating and resourceful book. Every page reveals fresh, provocative, and surprising insights into the forces that shape law. --Pierre N. Leval, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit The most important book ever written on intellectual property. --William Patry, former copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee Given the immense and growing importance of intellectual property to modern economies, this book should be welcomed, even devoured, by readers who want to understand how the legal system affects the development, protection, use, and profitability of this peculiar form of property. The book is the first to view the whole landscape of the law of intellectual property from a functionalist (economic) perspective. Its examination of the principles and doctrines of patent law, copyright law, trade secret law, and trademark law is unique in scope, highly accessible, and altogether greatly rewarding. --Steven Shavell, Harvard Law School, author of Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law

This respected resource provides up-to-date, integrated coverage of the law of trade secrets, copyright, trademarks and patents, ideas, and non-competition agreements. It covers the latest legal developments in such hot areas as biotechnology, intellectual property, due diligence, software protection, copyright infringement, ownership of employee inventions, and more. By Michael A. Epstein. Epstein on Intellectual Property, Fifth Edition covers the latest legal developments in such hot areas as biotechnology, intellectual property, due diligence, software protection, copyright infringement, ownership of employee inventions, and more. You will consult this reference for expert answers to questions such as how to: Prevent the unauthorized use and disclosure of your company's trade secrets Determine what types of materials and information are covered by the copyright laws Apply for and enforce patents Reduce the risk of claims under the andquot;law of ideasandquot; Make effective use of noncompetition agreements Deal with the unique problems of biotechnology