Accidental Rights

Abstract:     
Written for the Yale Law Journal's online Pocket Part, this is a much shorter and (I hope) more accessible iteration of my earlier paper, Risk Aversion and Rights Accretion in Intellectual Property Law, 116 Yale L.J. 882 (2007). It summarizes that paper's central point - i.e., that intellectual property entitlements are growing not just because of expansive court decisions and legislative enactments, but also because of seemingly sensible, risk-averse licensing decisions that inadvertently feed back into legal doctrine - and then explores how this phenomenon might apply to (and be manipulated by) enterprises such as Google Book Search.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 4

Keywords: copyright, trademark, patent, intellectual property, market, licensing, licenses, risk, risk aversion, persuasion knowledge, fair use, confusion, nonobviousness, sponsorship, feedback, doctrinal, accretion

JEL Classification: D81, K41, K42, K39

Accepted Paper Series