Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-5042-5213

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Keywords

Extraterritoriality, Jurisdiction, Court split, Patent law, Copyright, Trademark, Infringement, Supreme Court, Foreign activity, Comity

Abstract

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I discusses the state of the law of extraterritoriality in copyright, trademark, and patent, as it stood before the Supreme Court’s recent intervention. This review demonstrates that all three disciplines were treating extraterritoriality very differently, and none were paying much attention to the presumption against extraterritoriality. Part II reviews a tetralogy of recent Supreme Court cases, describing the Court’s attempt to formalize its approach to extraterritoriality across all fields of law. Part III analyzes the state of IP law in the aftermath of this tetralogy of extraterritoriality cases. It concludes that there has been some impact on patent law, but virtually none on copyright or trademark. The Article assesses whether there is a new extraterritoriality for intellectual property and concludes that there is not: The Supreme Court’s efforts, at least in IP, have not led to greater coherence. While there may be reasons for the lower courts’ failure to follow the framework, it does represent a missed opportunity for cross-fertilization, at least among intellectual property regimes, if not across all fields of law. It also offers a call for the consideration of comity—looking to foreign law and potential conflicts—in deciding whether to apply U.S. law extraterritorially.

First Page

457

Publication Title

Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts

Comments

© 2021 Holbrook. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source are credited.

Download

Share

COinS