In addition to adding Jay Dratler, one of America's leading authorities on licensing intellectual property, and Barbara Wrigley, a practitioner with many years experience in the field, to the list of co-authors, the Second Edition of Licensing Intellectual Property in the Information Age (formerly Licensing Intellectual Property in the Digital Age) has been largely redone. Keeping the same basic structure, each chapter has been updated with the most current developments in licensing law. Chapter 2 now works as a much more efficient introduction to intellectual property. Additionally, with the inclusion of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act in Chapter 8 and an entirely new chapter on Biotechnology, the book is now the most up-to-date and authoritative textbook available. The book emphasizes application in actual situations, with chapters designed to simulate the work flow a lawyer is likely to face in the negotiation, formation, and enforcement of an intellectual property license. The Problem Supplement is a unique addition to this book (see the link below). It contains two types of exercises. The first is a continuous series of problems based on factual scenarios involving a fictitious sports car manufacturer, Contair Corp. These exercises are called "Problems." They are numbered consecutively and keyed to the chapter of the casebook for which they should be assigned. A second set of exercises is entirely separate and does not involve the ongoing Contair hypothetical. These are called "Exercises" and are keyed to the chapter of the casebook to which they are relevant. Additional exercises, such as those involving the distinctiveness of trademarks, are included in Chapter 2 of the Casebook (Overview of Intellectual Property Law), but are not included in the supplement, because they are review exercises and are unlikely to change. To access the On-line Problem Supplement for Licensing Intellectual Property in the Information Age, Second Edition, click here.

Imagine sending a magazine article to 10 friends-making photocopies, putting them in envelopes, adding postage, and mailing them. Now consider how much easier it is to send that article to those 10 friends as an attachment to e-mail. Or to post the article on your own site on the World Wide Web. The ease of modifying or copying digitized material and the proliferation of computer networking have raised fundamental questions about copyright and patentâ€"intellectual property protections rooted in the U.S. Constitution. Hailed for quick and convenient access to a world of material, the Internet also poses serious economic issues for those who create and market that material. If people can so easily send music on the Internet for free, for example, who will pay for music? This book presents the multiple facets of digitized intellectual property, defining terms, identifying key issues, and exploring alternatives. It follows the complex threads of law, business, incentives to creators, the American tradition of access to information, the international context, and the nature of human behavior. Technology is explored for its ability to transfer content and its potential to protect intellectual property rights. The book proposes research and policy recommendations as well as principles for policymaking.

Professor Litman's work stands out as well-researched, doctrinally solid, and always piercingly well-written.-JANE GINSBURG, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property, Columbia UniversityLitman's work is distinctive in several respects: in her informed historical perspective on copyright law and its legislative policy; her remarkable ability to translate complicated copyright concepts and their implications into plain English; her willingness to study, understand, and take seriously what ordinary people think copyright law means; and her creativity in formulating alternatives to the copyright quagmire. -PAMELA SAMUELSON, Professor of Law and Information Management; Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California, BerkeleyIn 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts.In this enlightening and well-argued book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society?Litman's critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork. She argues for reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.This paperback edition includes an afterword that comments on recent developments, such as the end of the Napster story, the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, the escalation of a full-fledged copyright war, the filing of lawsuits against thousands of individuals, and the June 2005 Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case.Jessica Litman (Ann Arbor, MI) is professor of law at Wayne State University and a widely recognized expert on copyright law.

This monograph pays special attention to the intellectual propertyof copyrights and patents. It examines how legal parameters,competing interests, and technological advances take shape ineconomic, political, and social contexts that require colleges anduniversities make intellectual property central to theiroperations. Economic, political and social forces are redefining knowledgeas property that can be owned, and institutions of highereducation, as producers of knowledge, are central participants ofthis phenomenon. Debates about intellectual property are rampant,some arguing that knowledge should not become a commodity forexchange, others than intellectual property fosters innovation insociety. What is not debatable is the importance of the law forresolving disputes about intellectual property. Today, the evolving legal context association with intellectualproperty and technological advancements have created competinginterests and demands from individuals, institutions and evennation. The law is often the realm in which these interests anddisputes take place, with more or less satisfying results. Collegesand universities must grapple with not only complex legal issuesbut also the philosophical and political consequences associatedwith the conversation of intellectual acts into property. This is the fourth issue in the 34th volume of the Jossey-Bassseries ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monographin the series is the definitive analysis of a tough highereducation problem, based on thorough research of pertinentliterature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified bya national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are thencommissioned to write the reports, with experts providing criticalreviews of each manuscript before publication.

A debate on the theory of intellectual property, the

This Manual focuses on issues essential for understanding licensing, including: the context in which licensing may occur; key terms of a licensing agreement and negotiation methods; and how to prepare for and negotiate a win-win licensing contract.

A movement emerges to challenge the tightening of intellectual property law around the world. At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.

An argument for retaining the notion of personal property in the products we “buy” in the digital marketplace. If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put in on the shelf, lend it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the ebooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your ebook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation—as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers several years ago. These readers thought they owned their copies of 1984. Until, it turned out, they didn't. In The End of Ownership, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz explore how notions of ownership have shifted in the digital marketplace, and make an argument for the benefits of personal property. Of course, ebooks, cloud storage, streaming, and other digital goods offer users convenience and flexibility. But, Perzanowski and Schultz warn, consumers should be aware of the tradeoffs involving user constraints, permanence, and privacy. The rights of private property are clear, but few people manage to read their end user agreements. Perzanowski and Schultz argue that introducing aspects of private property and ownership into the digital marketplace would offer both legal and economic benefits. But, most important, it would affirm our sense of self-direction and autonomy. If we own our purchases, we are free to make whatever lawful use of them we please. Technology need not constrain our freedom; it can also empower us.

This book comprehensively discusses the effects of digital technology on the way work is disseminated and the resulting challenges concerning the fair use of copyright. It also analyzes so-called fairness by examining theories on the system of fair use, demonstrating the “system changes that will be brought about by technological changes” from the perspective of economics, i.e., the problem of modification faced by the system of fair use of copyright. Exploring the nature and function of fair use and repositioning the fair use system, the book proposes a better design for China’s system of limitation on copyright and a readjustment of the copyright system. Lastly, in addition to analyzing the reconfigurations of fair use from an economic standpoint, the book describes in detail the interactions between legal systems and cultures.