The New Private Law and Intellectual Property

2020 ◽  
pp. 408-426
Author(s):  
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Concepts And Categories ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Legal Concepts

This chapter studies intellectual property (IP). A hallmark of the New Private Law (NPL) is attentiveness to and appreciation of legal concepts and categories, including the traditional categories of the common law. These categories can sometimes usefully be deployed outside of the traditional common law, to characterize, conceptualize, and critique other bodies of law. For scholars interested in IP, for example, common law categories can be used to describe patent, copyright, trademark, and other fields of IP as more or less “property-like” or “tort-like.” Thischapter investigates both the property- and tort-like features of IP to understand the circumstances under which one set of features tends to dominate and why. It surveys several doctrines within the law of copyright that demonstrate how courts move along the property/tort continuum depending on the nature of the copyrighted work at issue—including, in particular, how well the work’s protected contours are defined. This conceptual navigation is familiar, echoing how common law courts have moved along the property/tort continuum to address disputes over distinctive types of tangible resources.

Intellectual Property Law and Redressive Autonomy

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Intellectual Property Law ◽  
Additional Layer ◽  
The Common ◽  
Strong Commitment

Intellectual property law remains a body of private law, but for reasons that transcend its reliance on ideas and concepts from the common law of property and tort. This essay argues that the connection between forms of intellectual property law and private law is rooted in a form of autonomy that characterizes private law regimes—known as “redressive autonomy.” It shows how a strong commitment to redressive autonomy undergirds the unique right–duty structure of intellectual property, informs intellectual property’s central doctrines, and injects an additional layer of normative complexity into its functioning.

Illegal Earnings

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-80
Author(s):  
James Goudkamp ◽  
Lorenz König
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Considerable Promise ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

AbstractThis article addresses the principles of tort law that govern claims in respect of lost illegal earnings. It focuses on common law jurisdictions (and the law in the United Kingdom in particular) where such claims, despite apparently being commonplace, have been largely ignored by academics. It describes the existing law and calls in aid in this regard a four-fold taxonomy of cases. The article then turns attention to how claims in respect of lost illegal earnings ought to be decided. At this juncture, the article looks to ideas emanating from German tort law, which has developed a highly sophisticated jurisprudence on the subject of illegal earnings. The German approach, stated simply, requires tort law to defer to rules in other departments of private law. If, for example, contract law would not protect an interest that a claimant has in a particular transaction by reason of the transaction being tainted with illegality, tort law will not allow a claimant indirectly to obtain the benefits of that transaction via a claim for lost illegal earnings. It is argued that the German solution holds considerable promise and merits consideration as a serious alternative to the significantly more complicated principles that the common law courts have developed, which principles currently lack any thoroughgoing rationalisation.

28. Tortious protection of intellectual property rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 515-550
Author(s):  
Paul Torremans
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Trade Mark ◽  
Trade Marks ◽  
Passing Off ◽  
Trade Mark Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter discusses the ways in which the common law, in the form of the law of tort, creates rights of action. It focuses on the torts of passing off and malicious falsehood, although attention is also paid to the ways in which defamation can assist. These rights are supplementary, and complementary, to the statutory formal rights. In particular, trade mark law and passing off closely overlap, although s. 2(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 preserves passing off as a separate cause of action.

Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Equity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Order Constraint ◽  
The Common ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law

A late-comer to the field of private law theory, the inquiry into the foundations of the law of Equity raises some fundamental questions about the relationships between law and morality, the nature of rights, the extent to which we are willing to compromise on the Rule of Law ideal in order to achieve various social goals. In this volume, leading scholars in the field address these and the questions about underlying principles of Equity and its relationship to the common law: What relationships, if any, are there between the legal, philosophical, and moral senses of ‘equity’? Does Equity form a second-order constraint on law? If so, is its operation at odds with the rule of law? Do the various theories of Equity require some kind of separation of law and equity—and, if they do, what kind of separation? The volume further sheds light on some of the most topical questions of jurisprudence that are embedded in the debate around ‘fusion’.

The Context of Common Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-358
Author(s):  
Uwe Kischel
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
Working Out

This chapter focuses on common law. The common law is distinguished as a legal system developed by cases—that is, by judicial decisions. Put simply, the common law judge derives the law from previous decision of other judges. Even more importantly, common law courts typically do not create abstract legal rules to decide future cases. The method of the common law is not focused on deductively deriving results from general legal principles, but rather on inductively working out principles from individual decisions. This means that only judges themselves remain as creators of law. According to this view, common law would actually be judge-made law, a view also common among comparative lawyers.

scholarly journals Regards sur le nouveau droit de la famille au Canada anglais et au Québec

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 723-784
Author(s):  
Denyse Guay-Archambault
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
English Canada ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Code Civil

The English origin of the law in the Common law jurisdictions in Canada makes it mandatory to study common law and English statutory law. It is through those that we can follow the development of a family property law in English Canada. Starting from an individualistic view of the spouses' property, we shall witness the emergence of the idea of « family assets » which has been « enshrined » in recent legislation. The law of Québec has evolved differently. Though of Trench origin, it has not kept as near its mother-country as its neighbour's has done with English law. Turthermore, due to its civilian character, its principles of private law are to be found in the Civil Code. This favours a different approach. That is why we will generally confine our study to those rules which are to be found in the Code civil du Bas-Canada and to the newly adopted Code civil du Québec. We will see what has become of the original community of property and compare the present law of Québec with recent legislation in English Canada.

scholarly journals What's Wrong with Restitution

1969 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevens ◽  
Jason W. Neyers
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Simple Formulation ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

The law of restitution has developed out of the law of quasi-contract and the law of constructive trust. Inadequate attention to the logic and coherence of doctrines in the law of restitution, however, renders this new law as opaque and confused as its predecessor. This is largely due to the remedial mentality of the common law. The remedy to the remedial mentality is to concentrate future efforts in stating doctrine on defining rights, not remedies. The precedent for this type of change in method is the transformation that occurred in contract and tort over the past 100 years, inspired, in part, by civilian theories of private law. The right that generates the remedy restitution is the cause of action in unjust enrichment. It arises where there has been a non-consensual receipt and retention of value, that is, a receipt and retention of value that occurs without "juristic reason." "Nonconsensual" means by mistake, by theft or by finding. There are a number of problems in the method of the common law tradition which stand in the way of recognizing this simple formulation: (a) The inherent expansiveness of "restitution " and "unjust enrichment" if these terms are not rigorously defined; (b) The lack of serious competition for the expansive versions of the subject, on a number of fronts; (c) The lack of a clear direction in the efforts to reform the law of quasi-contract and constructive trust; (d) The deeply embedded nature of the quasi-contract thinking; (e) Poor analysis in some areas of the law of contract and (f) Tort; and (g) The lack of an explicit agency of reform in the tradition.

Bracton, the Year Books, and the “Transformation of Elementary Legal Ideas” in the Early Common Law

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Seipp
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Property Ownership ◽  
Early Use ◽  
The Common ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Legal Concepts

The language of the common law has a life and a logic of its own, resilient through eight centuries of unceasing talk. Basic terms of the lawyer's specialized vocabulary, elementary conceptual distinctions, and modes of argument, which all go to make “thinking like a lawyer” possible, have proved remarkably durable in the literature of the common law. Two fundamental distinctions—between “real” and “personal” actions and between “possessory” and “proprietary” remedies—can be traced back to their early use in treatises of the first generations of professional common law judges and in reports of courtroom dialogue from the first generations of professional advocates in common law courts. Together these distinctions give the clearest indications that the early common law professions borrowed the vocabulary and techniques of Roman and canon law. Moreover, they play an important role in the ongoing historical debate over English legal concepts of property ownership.

The Common Law Courts and the Law of the Sea

1923 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 777 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gorham Palfrey
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts
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