By Kathleen Wills*
The question whether patents are property rights is a continuing and hotly debated topic in IP law. Despite an abundance of scholarship (see here, here, here, here, and here) detailing how intellectual property (“IP”) rights have long been equated with property rights in land and other tangible assets, critics often claim that this “propertarian” view of IP is a recent development. Read more
By Adam Mossoff, Sean O’Connor, & Evan Moore*
The price of the miracle drugs everyone uses today is cause for concern among people today. The President has commented on it. Some academics, lawyers, and policymakers have routinely called for the government to “do something” to lower prices. Read more
ARLINGTON, Virginia – August 22, 2018 – The Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) announced today that Matthew Barblan, CPIP’s Executive Director, will leave the center this month to join the Association of American Publishers (AAP) as Vice President, Public Policy. Read more
In a recent op-ed in the LA Times, Professors Chris Sprigman and Mark Lemley praise the notice and takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as “a bit of copyright law worth saving.” They argue that Section 512 of the DMCA continues to serve its purpose of balancing the rights of copyright owners and creators with those of Internet service providers (ISPs), while leaving both sides only “slightly disappointed.” Read more
Ever since the U.S. Copyright Office announced its study of the DMCA last December, the notice-and-staydown issue has become a particularly hot topic. Critics of notice-and-staydown have turned up the volume, repeating the same vague assertions about freedom, censorship, innovation, and creativity that routinely pop up whenever someone proposes practical solutions to curb online infringement. Read more
Producer Richard Gladstein knows all about piracy. As he recently wrote for The Hollywood Reporter, his latest film, The Hateful Eight, was “viewed illegally in excess of 1.3 million times since its initial theatrical release on Christmas Day.” Gladstein is not shy about pointing fingers and naming names. Read more
Last week, CPIP published a new white paper, Copyright Principles and Priorities to Foster a Creative Digital Marketplace, by Sandra Aistars, Mark Schultz, and myself, which draws from the testimonies and scholarly writings of CPIP Senior Scholars in order to guide Congress as it continues its comprehensive review of the Copyright Act. Read more
Here’s a brief excerpt of a post by Terrica Carrington that was published on IPWatchdog.
CPIP went against the grain with this conference, and showed us, bit by bit, what our world might look like today without intellectual property rights. Music wouldn’t sound the same. Read more
In Creators, Innovators, and Appropriation Mechanisms, CPIP Senior Scholar Sean O’Connor tackles the erroneous narrative in copyright debates that tech firms produce “the innovative technologies and digital platforms of the future” while content owners “thwart this progress to maintain the status quo of an analog content world that no longer exists.” Read more
