This essay attempts to explore trademark law and the marks themselves from a semiotic viewpoint to provide a deeper understanding to (trademark) law as a system of signs. Although the language of trademark law may suggest slightly different meanings, for the purpose of this essay “trademark” will refer to an area of law (unless otherwise indicated) and “mark” will refer to the individual sign. The first part of this essay will provide a brief overview of semiotics. Second, it will outline (...) a general look at trademark law as set forth in the Lanham Act. The third section is a semiotic approach to provide a deeper understanding of trademark law. Finally, the essay will analyze a seminal trademark case whilst using semiotics to address legal meaning within the case. Semiotics teaches that no absolute meaning can be found. This essay, then, attempts to secure at least one particular meaning of the Qualitex case and what it means in trademark law today. (shrink)

Natural sciences are credited with being the chief force in the process of rendering relative many elements of our world view. To make acceptable the relative character of the order of two poles for the public, however, is the task of (idealist) philosophy. I reduce the division of objective/subjective to sensible duality. To explain the belief in sensible duality, I use unusual means: personifying the sensible content. It is the distinction between present (as extension) and absolute present (as the absence (...) of extension), which I call the trademark of idealist philosophy. This distinction is based on the striking assertion that though finite time can be divided infinitely, but at the same time, this division is not permitted to be performed, protecting the conceptual substance. The noninfinite division of finite time results in the definition: present = an extension-atom. This short extension is an important component of the notion “original environment”. The message “total nonuniversality” does not exist without that “place”. (shrink)

Trademarks are not just property; they are aesthetic creations that pervade everyday experience. As pervasive aesthetic creations having literary, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and musical content, trademarks deserve aesthetic analysis. So this paper discusses the origins, strength, appeal, and effectiveness of trademarks within the context of aesthetic considerations such as meaning, intention, authorship, and mode of creation. Also reviewed are morphemic and phonemic analysis of trademarks, semantic positioning, the dichotomy between creation and discovery of trademarks, and (...) the differences between trademarks and titles. The discussion is confined to "word marks" consisting of alphanumeric characters because discussing other kinds of marks (such as designs, configurations, sounds, colors, and scents) would raise issues well beyond the scope of a single article. (shrink)

This study examines the use of disparaging and offensive trademarks and mascots by sports teams. Specifically, this study considers whether the continued use of Native American symbols and mascots in sports comports with the Christians-Nordenstreng conceptualization of social responsibility, which considers the three principles of human dignity, truth-telling, and nonmaleficence. To do this, the article considers the history and arguments both for and against the use of these symbols in sports communication. This article concludes with a discussion of how (...) the use of these trademarks does not fulfill the three principles of social responsibility and what that means for the symbols’ continued use. (shrink)

If a trademark becomes a generic term, it may be cancelled under trademark law, a process known as genericide. Typically, in genericide cases, consumer surveys are brought into evidence to establish a mark’s semantic status as generic or distinctive. Some drawbacks of surveys are cost, delay, small sample size, lack of reproducibility, and observer bias. Today, however, much discourse involving marks is online. As a potential complement to consumer surveys, therefore, we explore an artificial intelligence approach based chiefly on word (...) embeddings: mathematical models of meaning based on distributional semantics that can be trained on texts selected for jurisdictional and temporal relevance. After identifying two main factors in mark genericness, we first offer a simple screening metric based on the ngram frequency of uncapitalized variants of a mark. We then add two word embedding metrics: one addressing contextual similarity of uncapitalized variants, and one comparing the neighborhood density of marks and known generic terms in a category. For clarity and validation, we illustrate our metrics with examples of genericized, somewhat generic, and distinctive marks such as, respectively, DUMPSTER, DOBRO, and ROLEX. (shrink)

The Internet presents opportunities for corporations to efficiently build their brands online and to enhance their global reach. But there are threats as well as opportunities, since anti-branding and free-riding activities are easier in cyberspace. One such threat is theunauthorized incorporation of a trademark into a domain name. This can lead to trademark dilution and cause consumer confusion. But some users claim a right to use these trademarks for the purpose of parody or criticism. Underlying these trademark conflicts is (...) the familiar tension between property rights and free speech rights. While some trademark scholars are reluctant to consider a trademark as property, we find strong support for the property paradigm in Hegel’s philosophy. Assuming that a trademark is an earned property right, we propose that a trademark owner should be allowed to control the permutations of its trademark incorporated into domain names unless a reasonable person would not confuse that domain name with the company’s mark. But we also conclude that there must be latitude to employ a domain name for negative editorial comment, so long as the source and purpose of that domain name is plainly apparent. (shrink)

This book challenges the philosophical foundations of current trademark systems in the USA and the UK. It argues that the process of trademark creation should be transformed to the more practical and realistic proposition of "co-authorship" of trademarks by both the public and trademark owners. The book develops the "Economic-Social Planning justification", which departs from the economic argument that trademarks reduce consumer search costs, and then proposes that trademarks should be formulated in a manner which helps foster (...) a just and attractive culture. Trademarks are thus seen as source and origin identifiers, rather than quality identifiers. The book focuses on the often ignored role of the public and their rights in trademarks and calls for the adoption of the confusion rationale for trademark protection, not the dilution individualistic rationale. The two jurisdictions of this book prove adverse effects over the rights of the public in terms of using trademarks in cultural and expressive contexts, thereby threatening the principles of freedom of expression as a human fundamental right. (shrink)

The third edition of Webster’s International Dictionary, first published in 1961, represented a novel approach to lexicography. It recorded the English language used in everyday life, incorporating colloquial terms that previous grammarians would have considered unfit for any responsible dictionary. Many were scandalized by the new lexicography. Trademark lawyers were not the most prominent of these critics, but the concerns they expressed are significant because they touched on the core structure of the trademark as a form of property in language. (...) In the course of eavesdropping on everyday usage, Merriam-Webster’s lexicographers picked up on the use of trademarks as common nouns: “thermos” as a generic noun for any vacuum flask, “cellophane” as a term for transparent wrapping, and so on. If Webster’s Third were to be taken as sound evidence of the meaning of words, then the danger was that some of the most familiar marks in the USA would be judged “generic” in the legal sense, and would thereby cease to be proprietary. In this article, we explore the implications of this encounter between law and lexicographic technique. (shrink)

The legal protection of well-known trademarks is an exception to the fundamental principles of trademark law, i.e. territorality, registration and „speciality“. The well-known trademark is protected even if it had not been registered according to the national legal regulation of that state, in which protection is sought. The well-known trademark can also be protected even in respect to the goods and (or) services which are not similar to those for which the well-known trademark is used or registered (in case (...) the trademark is registered). (shrink)

One strategy for indigenous producers competing with global capital is to obtain geographic source protection (a form of trademark) for products traditionally associated with a cultural grouping or region. The strategy is controversial, and this article adds an additional reason to be cautious about adopting it. Specifically, consumers increasingly consume brands not for the products they designate but for the affiliation with the brands themselves. Since the benefits of source protection depend upon a consumer's desire to have a product actually (...) from that source community, if consumers care more about the brand designation than the actual source, then those benefits will be more difficult to realize. In such an environment there would be tremendous pressure both to produce products that conform to (often exoticized) western images of cultures and to create property rights in the culture itself, empowering elites to further marginalize and suppress dissenting views. (shrink)

Nike. McDonald’s Apple. These companies and many others invest millions of dollars each year protecting that one thing that distinguishes them in the marketplace – a trademark. A company’s trademark is the symbol that allows consumers to know that they are dealing with a particular company. This article addresses the extent to which some companies will go to obtain and protect a trademark. Specifically, it will address the fight between Cisco and Apple over the iPhone trademark, as both companies took (...) questionable steps in the United States and abroad to obtain rights to the iPhone mark. In addition, the basics of trademark law and ethical theories relevant to trademark law will be addressed. (shrink)

This article focuses on the analysis of the main positions of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania in the cases of intellectual property law. In the article three judgments and the positions of the Constitutional Court extracted therefrom are analysed. The Constitutional Court has formed several important positions with reference to intellectual property law regarding usage of property protection norms for the protection of intellectual property, requirements of application of compensation as an alternative to damages compensation and the (...) calculation of criterions thereof as well as functional legal protection of trademarks. It should be noted that Article 23(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania has extended protection to property and, as the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania has noted, the constitutional protection of property covers not only the protection of tangible, but also of intellectual property. In the same judgment, the Constitutional Court stated another important intellectual property related rule, namely that constitutionally established property protection rights have to be implemented regardless of whether a corresponding international treaty has not been ratified, as protection of authors’ rights is granted under Articles 23 and 42(3) of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. However, the second position stating that the rights of foreign subjects are to be implemented even though a corresponding international treaty has not been signed is to be criticised as by coming to such a conclusion the Constitutional Court has ignored the otherwise generally recognised principle of territoriality of intellectual property rights. In two other cases the Constitutional Court has made important statements relevant to intellectual property law. First of all, the Court stated that compensation instead of claiming actual damages is constitutional. By analysing the positions formulated by the Court, an indirect conclusion can be made to the effect that compensation instead of claiming actual damages is necessary in order to ensure effective protection of intellectual property rights. In other words, the purposes of compensation can be recognised: restoring (compensating) the infringed interests of the injured party; simplifying judicial proceedings, whereby faster proceedings (litigation) and easier substantiation is sought; and the preventive purpose (strong preventive effect). However, the Court’s argument regarding the criterion of compensation calculation, saying that the damages incurred by the intellectual property rights owner depend on the sale value of the product concerned is criticisable, as it is rarely the case that the licence fee or profit acquired in the result of unauthorised use of intellectual property objects is calculated with reference to the final sale price of the product. Notwithstanding the arguably weak argument of the Court, the Court’s position regarding the criterion of final sale price itself does not preclude the possibility of reaching a fair final decision. Finally, the Court acknowledged that trademark protection was limited to the economic functions of the trademark and the full protection thereof. (shrink)

The web creates manyopportunities for encroachment on intellectualproperty including trademarks. Our principaltask in this paper is an investigation into anunusual form of such encroachment: theimproper use of metatags. A metatag is a pieceof HTML code that provides summary informationabout a web page. If used in an appropriatemanner, these metatags can play a legitimaterole in helping consumers locate information. But the ``keyword'' metatag is particularlysusceptible to manipulation. These tags can beeasily abused by web site creators anxious tobait search engines and (...) bring scores ofvisitors to their sites. The law aboutmetatags is far from settled and many legalscholars are uncomfortable with the conclusionthat the unauthorized use of a trademark in ametatag represents infringement. How should weassess this practice known as ``spamdexing'' froma normative perspective? Is it commercial fairplay or something more sinister? We make thecase here that there are salient moral problemswith spamdexing since it exploits thereputational goodwill of trademark owners andconfuses consumers. It violates basic moralduties and it flouts the golden rule principle. Hence unauthorized use of a competitor'strademark in a metatag is not morallyacceptable. (shrink)

For most of the 20th century, the condom in the United States was a cheap, useful, but largely unmentionable product. Federal and state statutes prohibited the advertising and open display of condoms, their distribution by mail and across state lines, and their sale for the purpose of birth control; in some states, even owning or using condoms was illegal. By the end of World War I, condoms were increasingly acceptable for the prevention of sexually transmitted disease, but their unique dual (...) function—for disease prevention and contraception—created ongoing ambiguities for sellers, consumers, and distributors as well as for legal, political, health, and moral leaders. Not until the 1970s did condoms emerge from the shadows and join other personal hygiene products on open drugstore and supermarket shelves and in national advertisements. Then came the 1980s and AIDS when, despite the rise of Ronald Reagan, the radical right’s demonization of condoms, and the initial reluctance of condom merchants to market to gay constituencies, the HIV/AIDS epidemic slowly but inexorably propelled the condom to the top of the prevention agenda. The condom’s journey from lewd device to global superstar was fitful, but colorful. The Comstock Act of 1873, prohibiting birth control information and devices, created a vast underground operation—periodically illuminated, however, by arrests, protests, legal proceedings, and media coverage. This essay chronicles one such moment of illumination: the legal battle in the 1920s and 1930s over the legitimacy and legality of the Trojan Brand condom trademark and the unusual series of advertisements produced by the Youngs Rubber Corporation, makers of Trojans, to dramatize the ethical and economic issues of the trademark battle. Culminating in Youngs Rubber Corporation v. C.I. Lee & Co., Inc. , this landmark case in trademark law established the right of the Trojan Brand condom, despite its ambiguous dual function, to the protection of a federal trademark. I seek to show how the Youngs antipiracy ad series illuminates the paradox of visibility by illuminating the paradox of any binary division: to establish the one depends inevitably on invoking or making visible—even if to suppress—the other. This essay is a case study in the negotiation of such a dialectic. (shrink)

In developing his trademark use of “consonance” to prescribe a relationship between Christian faith and the natural sciences, Ernan McMullin drew on severaldistinctly Augustinian philosophical and theological themes during his fifty years of scholarship. Particularly prominent in McMullin’s work were an emphasis placed on Augustine’s biblical hermeneutic, which prioritized both literal and non-literal interpretive techniques, and Augustine’s epistemology of divine illumination. This paper examines several elements as part of an expository account of McMullin’s contribution toward the consonance between Christian faith (...) and the natural sciences. It also outlines McMullin’s theory of retroduction and his account of scientific realism, both of which are philosophical positions that provide additional support for consonance from an epistemological perspective. I conclude that for McMullin, consonance is a differentiated term that hints at underlying metaphysical claims without necessarily delineating the nature of those claims. (shrink)

One of the trademarks of Nicolai Hartmann’s ontology is his theory of levels of reality. Hartmann drew from many sources to develop his version of the theory. His essay “Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie” testifies of the fact that he drew from Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. But this text was written relatively late in Hartmann’s career, which suggests that his interest in the theories of levels of the ancients may have been retrospective. In “Nicolai Hartmann und (...) seine Zeitgenossen,” Martin Morgenstern puts the emphasis on contemporaries of Hartmann: Émile Boutroux, Max Scheler, Heinrich Rickert, Karl Jaspers, and Arnold Gehlen. But there is another plausible source for Hartmann’s conception of levels that has so far remained overlooked in the literature. Hartmann studied with and was influenced by Nikolai Lossky. Lossky has a theory of levels that he adopted from Vladimir Solovyov. Solovyov presents his theory of levels, among other places, in Oпpaвдaнie дoбpa, where he says that the five principal stages of the cosmogonic process of ascension toward universal perfection, which are given in experience, are the mineral or inorganic realm, the vegetal realm, the animal realm, the realm of natural humanity, and the realm of spiritual or divine humanity. This theory appears to bear significant similarities with the theory of levels of reality that Hartmann will develop a few decades later. Solovyov was widely read in Russia and it would be unlikely that Hartmann was not at least minimally acquainted with his work. Chances are that Hartmann came into contact with it in some details. An intellectual lineage could thus likely be traced from Hartmann back to Solovyov. In this paper, I document and discuss this possible lineage. (shrink)

With his trademark eloquence and humour, Robert Dessaix, one of Australia's eminent writers, tackles humbug in the modern worldandmdash;the tide of mumbo jumbo where words fall short of what they mean and motivations are not always what they appear. MUP's Little Books on Big Themes series pairs leading Australian thinkers and cultural figures with some of the big themes in life.

"Taken as a trilogy, _consent not to be a single being_ is a monumental accomplishment: a brilliant theoretical intervention that might be best described as a powerful case for blackness as a category of analysis."—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of _Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination_ In _The Universal Machine_—the concluding volume to his landmark trilogy _consent not to be a single being_—Fred Moten presents a suite of three essays on Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon in which he explores (...) questions of freedom, capture, and selfhood. In trademark style, Moten considers these thinkers alongside artists and musicians such as William Kentridge and Curtis Mayfield while interrogating the relation between blackness and phenomenology. Whether using Levinas's idea of escape in unintended ways, examining Arendt's antiblackness through Mayfield's virtuosic falsetto and Anthony Braxton's musical language, or showing how Fanon's form of phenomenology enables black social life, Moten formulates blackness as a way of being in the world that evades regulation. Throughout _The Universal Machine_—and the trilogy as a whole—Moten's theorizations of blackness will have a lasting and profound impact. (shrink)

Enactivists seek to revolutionize the new sciences of the mind. In doing so, they promote adopting a thoroughly anti-intellectualist starting point, one that sees mentality as rooted in engaged, embodied activity as opposed to detached forms of thought. In advocating the so-called embodied turn, enactivists touch on recurrent themes of central importance in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. More than this, today's enactivists characterize the nature of minds and how they fundamentally relate to the world in ways that not only echo but (...) fully agree with many of the later Wittgenstein's trademark philosophical remarks on the same topics. (shrink)

New and radically reformative thinking about the enactive and embodied basis of cognition holds out the promise of moving forward age-old debates about whether we learn and how we learn. The radical enactive, embodied view of cognition (REC) poses a direct, and unmitigated, challenge to the trademark assumptions of traditional cognitivist theories of mind—those that characterize cognition as always and everywhere grounded in the manipulation of contentful representations of some kind. REC has had some success in understanding how sports skills (...) and expertise are acquired. But, REC approaches appear to encounter a natural obstacle when it comes to understanding skill acquisition in knowledge-rich, conceptually based domains like the hard sciences and mathematics. This paper offers a proof of concept that REC’s reach can be usefully extended into the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, especially when it comes to understanding the deep roots of such learning. In making this case, this paper has five main parts. The section “Ancient Intellectualism and the REC Challenge” briefly introduces REC and situates it with respect to rival views about the cognitive basis of learning. The “Learning REConceived: from Sports to STEM?” section outlines the substantive contribution REC makes to understanding skill acquisition in the domain of sports and identifies reasons for doubting that it will be possible to apply the same approach to knowledge-rich STEM domains. The “Mathematics as Embodied Practice” section gives the general layout for how to understand mathematics as an embodied practice. The section “The Importance of Attentional Anchors” introduces the concept “attentional anchor” and establishes why attentional anchors are important to educational design in STEM domains like mathematics. Finally, drawing on some exciting new empirical studies, the section “Seeing Attentional Anchors” demonstrates how REC can contribute to understanding the roots of STEM learning and inform its learning design, focusing on the case of mathematics. (shrink)

Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. It coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of "film-thinking," arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic "intent" about the characters, spaces, and events of film. Discussing contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr and the Dardenne brothers, this timely contribution to the study of film and philosophy will provoke debate among audiences and (...) filmmakers alike. FILMOSOPHY ® is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history theory and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author. (shrink)

This volume, which illustrates the originality, force, and scope of his work, also displays Nozick's trademark blending of extraordinary analytical rigor with ...

The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating the key trademark of intelligent causes: specified events of small probability. Just about anything that happens is highly improbable, but when a highly improbable event is also specified (i.e., conforms to an independently given pattern) undirected natural causes lose their explanatory power. Design inferences can be found in a range of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Philosophy is a discipline that makes no observations, conducts no experiments, and needs no input from experience. It is an armchair subject, requiring only thought. Yet that thought can advance knowledge in unexpected directions, not only through the discovery of new facts but also through the enhancement of what we already know. Philosophy can clarify our vision of the world and provide exciting ways to interpret it. Of course, philosophy's unified purpose hasn't kept the discipline from splintering into warring camps. (...) Departments all over the world are divided among analytical and continental schools, Heidegger, Hegel, and other major thinkers, challenging the growth of the discipline and obscuring its relevance and intent. Having spent decades teaching in American, Asian, African, and European universities, Michael Dummett has felt firsthand the fractured state of contemporary practice and the urgent need for reconciliation. Setting forth a proposal for renewal and reengagement, Dummett begins with the nature of philosophical inquiry as it has developed for centuries, especially its exceptional openness and perspective-which has, ironically, led to our present crisis. He discusses philosophy in relation to science, religion, morality, language, and meaning and recommends avenues for healing around a renewed investigation of mind, language, and thought. Employing his trademark frankness and accessibility, Dummett asks philosophers to resolve theoretical difference and reclaim the vital work of their practice. (shrink)

Chemical structures are among the trademarks of our profession, as surely chemical as flasks, beakers and distillation columns. When someone sees one of us busily scribbling formulas or structures, he or she has no trouble identifying a chemist. Yet these familiar objects, which accompany our work from start to end, from the initial doodlings (Fig. I) to the final polished artwork in a publication (Fig. II), are deceptively simple. They raise interesting and difficult questions about representation. It is the (...) intent of this article to reflect upon molecular graphics. (shrink)

Twenty years ago, Alain Badiou's first Manifesto for Philosophy rose up against the all-pervasive proclamation of the "end" of philosophy. In lieu of this problematic of the end, he put forward the watchword: "one more step". The situation has considerably changed since then. Philosophy was threatened with obliteration at the time, whereas today it finds itself under threat for the diametrically opposed reason: it is endowed with an excessive, artificial existence. "Philosophy" is everywhere. It serves as a trademark for various (...) media pundits. It livens up cafés and health clubs. It has its magazines and its gurus. It is universally called upon, by everything from banks to major state commissions, to pronounce on ethics, law and duty. In essence, "philosophy" has now come to stand for nothing other than its most ancient enemy: conservative ethics. Badiou's second manifesto therefore seeks to demoralize philosophy and to separate it from all those "philosophies" that are as servile as they are ubiquitous. It demonstrates the power of certain eternal truths to illuminate action and, as such, to transport philosophy far beyond the figure of "the human" and its "rights". There, well beyond all moralism, in the clear expanse of the idea, life becomes something radically other than survival. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is a man-made disaster, caused by undue interference in the ecological balance and the lives of multiple species. Paradoxically, the contagion has resulted in increased use of technology and digital mediation, as well as enhanced hopes for vaccines and biomedical solutions. It has thereby intensified humans’ reliance on the very high-tech economy of cognitive capitalism that caused the problems in the first place. This combination of ambivalent elements in relation to the Fourth Industrial revolution and the Sixth (...) Extinction is the trademark of the posthuman condition. This essay explores this condition further, offering both critical and affirmative propositions for moving forward. (shrink)

From early on, comparative philosophy has had on offer a high variety of goals, approaches and methodologies. Such high variety is still today a trademark of the discipline, and it is not uncommon of representatives of one camp in comparative philosophy to think of those in other camps as not really being about ‘comparative philosophy’. Much of the disagreement arguably has to do with methodological problems related to the concept of comparison and with the widely prevailing but unwarranted assumption that (...) comparative philosophy should be about comparing ‘culturally different philosophies’. This paper seeks to problematize this assumption by clarifying conceptually the notions of ‘comparative philosophy’ and of ‘comparison’, by showing the prevalence of the assumption in recent second-order discussions of methodology in comparative philosophy and its restraining implications in a randomly selected contribution of ‘Chinese philosophy’. At the end, a rallying call for a (self-)critical comparative philosophy is issued. (shrink)

In attempting to answer the question posed by this book's title, Giorgio Agamben does not address the idea of philosophy itself. Rather, he turns to the apparently most insignificant of its components: the phonemes, letters, syllables, and words that come together to make up the phrases and ideas of philosophical discourse. A summa, of sorts, of Agamben's thought, the book consists of five essays on five emblematic topics: the Voice, the Sayable, the Demand, the Proem, and the Muse. In keeping (...) with the author's trademark methodology, each essay weaves together archaeological and theoretical investigations: to a patient reconstruction of how the concept of language was invented there corresponds an attempt to restore thought to its place within the voice; to an unusual interpretation of the Platonic Idea corresponds a lucid analysis of the relationship between philosophy and science, and of the crisis that both are undergoing today. In the end, there is no universal answer to what is an impossible or inexhaustible question, and philosophical writing—a problem Agamben has never ceased to grapple with—assumes the form of a prelude to a work that must remain unwritten. (shrink)

Just as human embryonic stem cell research has generated controversy about the uses of human embryos for research and therapeutic applications, human embryonic stem cell patents raise fundamental ethical issues. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted foundational patents, including a composition of matter (or product) patent to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s intellectual property office. In contrast, the European Patent Office rejected the same WARF patent application for ethical reasons. This article assesses (...) the appropriateness of these patents placing the discussion in the context of the deontological and consequentialist ethical issues related to human embryonic stem cell patenting. It advocates for a patent system that explicitly takes ethical factors into account and explores options for new types of intellectual property arrangements consistent with ethical concerns. (shrink)

John Dewey attempted a pragmatic aufhebung of the disparate methodological aims of social science-explanation, understanding, and critique- in his 1938 Logic: the theory of Inquiry. There, in his penultimate chapter ‘Social Inquiry’, Dewey performed a trademark implementation of his deflation of absolutistic and universalistic pretensions in intellectual and theoretical discourse, in this case with respect to any one approach to social science. This deflation--as elsewhere in his analogous treatments of epistemology, ethics, and the theory of action-- involved the reconstruction of (...) the claims of the naturalist, interpretivist, and critical schools of social science into one overall pattern of social inquiry. This recasts the different and seemingly irreconcilable aims of these schools into a series of steps in a practice. That these claims, then, simultaneously stand independently but in varying degrees of tension with, and support of, each other is a hallmark of pragmatism’s embrace of pluralism in intelligent problem solving. Dewey’s discussion of interpretation needs supplementation from his broader philosophical commitments in order to see the full sense of both the compatibility and the incompatibility of his theory with philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Recently ethical implications of human resource management have intensified the focus on care perspectives in management and organization studies. Appeals have also been made for the concept of organizational care to be grounded in philosophies of care rather than business theories. Care perspectives see individuals, especially women, as primarily relational and view work as a means by which people can increase in self-esteem, self-develop and be fulfilled. The ethic of care has received attention in feminist ethics and is often socially (...) construed as a feminine ethic. Although well developed in the caring professions there remains no model or definition of the care ethic in management literature with little care research undertaken. This paper develops the concept of the care ethic using Heidegger’s philosophy, namely, care is fundamental to human being. To show Heideggerian care, an individual notices, pays attention to another and responds in ways to empower and enable. In a study which aimed to analyze women’s lived experience of career, we applied the philosophically grounded methodology hermeneutic phenomenology. Findings revealed the power of Heideggerian care, Sorge, as a key factor in creating meaning. From this, we propose that care has potential as a theoretical and philosophically based construct with strong practical implications. It provides a way of understanding the care ethic, lies at the heart of our being, and is essential to meaning in our grelationships and undertakings. Crucially, it can provide reprieve from the existential angst that trademarks our being. (shrink)

The theories that form the heterogeneous family of two‐dimensional or 2D semantics are rooted in the tradition of possible‐worlds semantics made popular by Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Advocates of 2D semantics agree that recognizing a dependence of truth on fact is not enough. Advocates of two‐dimensional semantics share a second trademark idea. They agree that the familiar apparatus of worlds‐cum‐intensions can be modified so as to capture both the dependencies they see. The commitments of all 2D theories can basically (...) be captured by one and the same formal framework of worlds‐cum‐intensions. David Kaplan's semantics aims to cover pure indexicals such as 'today' alongside impure indexicals such as 'you' and demonstratives such as 'this'. Kaplan starts off with two 'obvious principles': The referent of an indexical systematically depends on the respective context; and Indexicals are directly referential. (shrink)

Gregory Currie is one of the world’s preeminent philosophers of art and a highly-respected philosopher of mind. Imagining and Knowing: the Shape of Fiction is his seventh book, with his conspicuous contributions to the analytic tradition of philosophy including the first systematic philosophical aesthetics in no less than two fields, film (Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, 1995) and narrative (Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories, 2010). Currie’s trademark approach is the seamless integration of art criticism and (...) aesthetic theory on the one hand with empirical psychology and evolutionary biology on the other and Imagining and Knowing follows suit. His stated aim is twofold: to make a convincing case for the significance of the imagination to the understanding of and engagement with fiction and to make an equally convincing case against the significance of fiction as a source of knowledge. The monograph consists of an introduction, eleven chapters divided into three parts, and a coda. Part I is concerned with making a case for imagining fiction, defending fiction as an utterance over fiction as a genre (Chapter 1) and the role of the imagination in the engagement with fiction (Chapter 2). This role is fleshed out by means of Currie’s conceptions of ‘desires in imagination, or i-desires’ (Chapter 3) and i-emotions (Chapter 4), which also provide neat solutions to both the paradox of fiction and the imaginative resistance debates (56). Part II sets the scene for the case against fictional knowledge, establishing an epistemic taxonomy (Chapter 5), arguing that claims about the cognitive value of fiction should cohere with the findings of experimental psychology (Chapter 6), and debunking evolutionary claims for the significance of fiction (Chapter 7). Part III presents Currie’s deflationary account, tackling each of what he considers to be the four most convincing arguments for learning from fiction in turn: fictional thought experiments (Chapter 8), truth in literature (Chapter 9), the psychology of authors (Chapter 10), and the relationship between fiction and empathy (Chapter 11). (shrink)

Human gene patents are patents on human genes that have been removed from human bodies and scientifically isolated and manipulated in a laboratory. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO) has issued thousands of patents on such genes, and patents have also been granted by the European Patent Office, (the EPO). Legal and moral justification, however, are not identical, and it is possible for a legal decision to be immoral although consistent with legal precedent and procedure. So, it is (...) surprising to learn that some people believe that the legal justification of human gene patents can remove the most serious moral objections to them. Yet, those who are well-versed in patent law often believe that confusion over some quite basic legal and scientific facts accounts for moral objections to such patents and, in particular, for the belief that they justify the ownership of one person by another. Once these confusions are removed, they contend, we will see that there is nothing especially alarming about patents on human genes, and no reason to believe them immoral. -/- Such claims seem especially surprising because the morality of an invention is generally supposed to have little role in decisions about whether or not an invention deserves a patent under U.S. law. Although the European Patent Convention’s article 53 (a) prohibits patenting inventions, the publication or exploitation of which would be contrary to public order or morality, it turns out that this clause rarely justifies withholding a patent from an invention that otherwise meets legal criteria. Thus, although more than 320,000 patents have been granted by the EPO since its creation, this clause has never been used successfully to strike down a claim for a patent. Indeed, Ulrich Schatz explains, “Poisons, explosives, extremely dangerous chemical substances, devices used in nuclear power stations, agro-chemicals, pesticides and many other things which can threaten human life or damage the environment have been patented, despite the existence of the public order and morality bar” in almost all European countries. -/- Indeed, this paper shows, while ethical objections to human gene patents are often controversial, they need not be unreasonable, nor need they depend on mistaken assumptions about patent law. Rather, they may reflect familiar ethical concerns about the dominance of commercial imperatives in modern societies; concerns about the disparities in power and wealth amongst individuals and countries; and concerns about the lack of public discussion, transparency and accountability surrounding significant changes in people’s rights, status and opportunities. Hence, I conclude, ethical concerns cannot be easily dismissed and, indeed, point to the need to think harder about the nature and justification of patent law, itself. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is one of this century's most influential thinkers in the areas of social theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and music. Throughout the essays in this book, all of which concern musical matters, he displays an astonishing range of cultural reference, demonstrating that music is invariably social, political, even ethical. Adorno's insistence on the social character of aesthetic works will come as no surprise to those familiar with his writings, although many may be surprised by the volume's somewhat colloquial tone. This (...) colloquialism, in dialogue with Adorno's unceasing rigor, stems from the occasional sources of many of the essays, mainly public lectures and radio addresses. As such, this volume represents an important and, for English-language readers, largely unfamiliar side to Adorno. His arguments move more quickly than in his more formal and extended musicological works, and the writing is much more accessible and generous than his usually dense and frequently opaque prose. This volume includes essays on prominent figures in music (Alban Berg, Anton von Webern, Arturo Toscanini), compositional technique (the prehistory of the twelve-tone row, the function of counterpoint in new music), and the larger questions of musical sociology for which Adorno is most famous, including the relation of interpretation to audience, the ideological function of opera, and the historical meaning of musical technique. The essay on the sociology of music, for example, represents an early statement of what would soon become trademark principles of his mode of musical analysis, serving as a catalyst for his famous study Introduction to the Sociology of Music. Some forty years after most of these essays were written, they remain fresh and relevant. In part, this is because Adorno's method has only recently begun to make substantial inroads into Anglo-American musicology. And the interdisciplinary nature of his thought provides a precursor for today's interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Thierry de Duve argues in the first volume of Aesthetics at Large, is as relevant to the appreciation of art today as it was to the enjoyment of beautiful nature in 1790. Going against the grain of all aesthetic theories situated in the Hegelian tradition, this provocative thesis, which already guided de Duve’s groundbreaking book Kant After Duchamp (1996), is here pursued in order to demonstrate that far from confining aesthetics to a stifling formalism isolated (...) from all worldly concerns, Kant’s guidance urgently opens the understanding of art onto ethics and politics. Central to de Duve’s re-reading of the Critique of Judgment is Kant’s idea of sensus communis, ultimately interpreted as the mere yet necessary idea that human beings are capable of living in peace with one another. De Duve pushes Kant’s skepticism to its limits by submitting the idea of sensus communis to various tests leading to questions such as: Do artists speak on behalf of all of us? Is art the transcendental ground of democracy? Or, Was Adorno right when he claimed that no poetry could be written after Auschwitz? Loaded with de Duve’s trademark blend of wit and erudition and written without jargon, these essays radically renew current approaches to some of the most burning issues raised by modern and contemporary art. They are indispensable reading for anyone with a deep interest in art, art history, or philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

This article is part of a Symposium that examines the legal and policy issues raised by the Schwarzenegger bobblehead doll litigation, in which a Hollywood star-turned-governor sued under California's right of publicity laws and under federal copyright law to stop a small Ohio company from selling a bobblehead doll depicting Schwarzenegger in a business suit, with a bandolier of bullets, and brandishing an assault rifle. The article contends that defendants' unauthorized use of the Schwarzenegger image on dolls and their accompanying (...) packaging was permissible as First Amendment-protected free speech under California's right of publicity laws and also constituted fair use under federal copyright law. The article rejects the argument that a First Amendment defense to plaintiff's right of publicity claims was unavailable because a bobblehead doll is not a "traditional" medium of expression for ideas. The article recognizes that overly expansive assertions of rights of publicity and other intellectual property rights threaten to stifle creative expression and diminish the cultural commons. The article also calls for clearer and more consistent recognition of defenses to right of publicity claims, particularly for cases where a defendant's unauthorized appropriation of another's image or likeness is for purposes of caricature, parody, or satire¿especially where the image is that of a politician. It concludes that the settlement of the Schwarzenegger bobblehead doll case illustrates how "strategic" assertions of even objectively non-meritorious rights of publicity can allow powerful plaintiffs to censor unflattering depictions of them and to unduly expand intellectual property rights without full adjudication on the merits of such claims.This insight is critical, because while other scholars have suggested that the "over-protection" of intellectual property rights (including rights of publicity) has a deleterious effect on freedom of expression and the public domain, these criticisms focus almost exclusively on published appellate cases. Yet, as this article reminds us, most cases settle and never become litigated cases, much less published appellate decisions. And most disputes - including intellectual property disputes - never result in formal litigation in the first instance. As with most other areas of the civil disputing process, intellectual property disputes are processed in the "shadow of the law", where repeat players have strategic advantages to shape the outcomes of disputes in their favor. Thus, if we want to know whether intellectual property rights are over-protected, we need to know what happens (and why) in the shadow of intellectual property law. This insight is the basis for the author's empirical research-in-progress focusing on "strategic intellectual property enforcement" by owners of trademarks, copyrights, and patents, including enforcement that never results in litigation and is thus under the radar of what most legal scholars in this area of law examine. (shrink)

This edited book brings together articles by leading international scholars from diverse disciplinary perspectives who focus on the legal, social, and cultural dimensions of intellectual properties - including patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and rights of publicity. These articles employ a creatively eclectic approach to the study of intellectual property law and policy viewed through the lenses of traditional doctrinal analysis, historical perspectives, critical cultural study, and empirical examinations of intellectual property in action. The volume also directs critical attention (...) to the significance of intellectual property in contemporary processes of globalization and political economy.The editor's introductory essay, What is a 'Law and Society' Perspective on Intellectual Property?, identifies and analyzes the major approaches to interdisciplinary law and society scholarship on intellectual property and identifies each author's contribution to this emerging perspective on what is an increasingly important area of law worldwide. (shrink)

The article explores for the first time the theological relevance of the work of the artist Karl Bauer, who specialized in portraits of those he called „Great Men“. Influenced by the pseudo-science of phrenology, he believed that „greatness“ manifested itself in certain features of the skull. Luther, for example, he painted with a prominent forehead as a sign of strong will and Germanic defiance, presenting him as a national hero whose translation of the bible into German had laid the foundation (...) of Bismarck's Empire of 1870. Bauer's Luther-portraits became a trademark of national Protestantism until well into the 20th-century and were used in the mass media of popular culture. Their enormous popularity points to the relevance of non-logocentric means of theological communication which have not yet been sufficiently appreciated as an important source of church history. (shrink)

As a central part of the regulation of contemporary economies, intellectual property (IP) is central to all aspects of our lives. It matters for the works we create, the brands we identify and the medicines we consume. But if IP is power, what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, Gordon Hull examines different ways of understanding power in copyright, trademark and patent policy: as law, as promotion of public welfare, (...) and as promotion of neoliberal privatization. He argues that intellectual property policy is moving toward neoliberalism, even as that move is broadly contested in everything from resistance movements to Supreme Court decisions. This work should be read by anyone interested in understanding why the struggle to conceptualize IP matters. (shrink)

The profound truths contained in this book, with all of Susan Jeffers trademark warmth and enthusiasm, will make you laugh, make you cry, make you reach out and embrace all of life.