What He Said. The Transformative Potential of the Use of Copyrighted Content in Political Campaigns--or--How a Win for Mitt Romney Might Have Been a Victory for Free Speech

In January 2012, Mitt Romney\u27s campaign received a cease-and-desist letter charging, among other things, that its use of news footage concerning Newt Gingrich\u27s ethics problems in the House of Representatives constituted a violation of NBC\u27s copyright. This is just the latest such charge and came amidst similar allegations against the Gingrich and Bachmann campaigns and in the wake of similar allegations against both the McCain and Obama campaigns in 2008. Such allegations have plagued political campaigns as far back as Reagan\u27s in 1984. The existing literature is nearly devoid of a consideration of such uses as political speech protected by the First Amendment. Rather, scholars tend to focus on fair use. Courts have considered this question very rarely and also tend to concentrate on fair use. Because these cases rarely progress to decisions, there is little to be said of what courts have done but much to be said of what they ought to. This Article engages in a thought experiment of laying out the legal analysis in the case that will never be--NBC v. Romney--arguing that when copyrighted content is marshaled to advance a political message, copyright ought to yield to the First Amendment

Centering Education in the Next Great Copyright Act: A Response to Professor Jaszi

This article engages the recent Georgia State litigation regarding uses copyrighted content by teachers and seeks to place it within the larger context of the current state of affairs in education and in copyright policy making. In a recent article, Professor Peter Jaszi argued that educators need to begin to articulate the ways in which their uses are transformative in order to increase their chances of winning copyright infringement suits on the basis of fair use. While Jaszi’s point that educators need to better articulate their rights to use copyrighted content is well-taken, we argue that the appropriate audience educators should be targeting is not courts in the context of copyright infringement suits but Congress as it appears to be engaging in the initial steps of considering a comprehensive revision of the copyright statute

Glial Processes at the Drosophila Larval Neuromuscular Junction Match Synaptic Growth

Glia are integral participants in synaptic physiology, remodeling and maturation from blowflies to humans, yet how glial structure is coordinated with synaptic growth is unknown. To investigate the dynamics of glial development at the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ), we developed a live imaging system to establish the relationship between glia, neuronal boutons, and the muscle subsynaptic reticulum. Using this system we observed processes from two classes of peripheral glia present at the NMJ. Processes from the subperineurial glia formed a blood-nerve barrier around the axon proximal to the first bouton. Processes from the perineurial glial extended beyond the end of the blood-nerve barrier into the NMJ where they contacted synapses and extended across non-synaptic muscle. Growth of the glial processes was coordinated with NMJ growth and synaptic activity. Increasing synaptic size through elevated temperature or the highwire mutation increased the extent of glial processes at the NMJ and conversely blocking synaptic activity and size decreased the presence and size of glial processes. We found that elevated temperature was required during embryogenesis in order to increase glial expansion at the nmj. Therefore, in our live imaging system, glial processes at the NMJ are likely indirectly regulated by synaptic changes to ensure the coordinated growth of all components of the tripartite larval NMJ

Centering Education in the Next Great Copyright Act: A Response to Professor Jaszi

This article engages the recent Georgia State litigation regarding uses copyrighted content by teachers and seeks to place it within the larger context of the current state of affairs in education and in copyright policy making. In a recent article, Professor Peter Jaszi argued that educators need to begin to articulate the ways in which their uses are transformative in order to increase their chances of winning copyright infringement suits on the basis of fair use. While Jaszi’s point that educators need to better articulate their rights to use copyrighted content is well-taken, we argue that the appropriate audience educators should be targeting is not courts in the context of copyright infringement suits but Congress as it appears to be engaging in the initial steps of considering a comprehensive revision of the copyright statute

Critical Race IP

In this Article, written on the heels of Race IP 2017, a conference we co-organized with Amit Basole and Jessica Silbey, we propose and articulate a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary movement that we call Critical Race Intellectual Property (Critical Race IP). Specifically, we argue that given trends toward maximalist intellectual property policy, it is now more important than ever to study the racial investments and implications of the laws of copyright, trademark, patent, right of publicity, trade secret, and unfair competition in a manner that draws upon Critical Race Theory (CRT). Situating our argument in a historical context, we articulate the provisional boundaries and core ideological commitments that define Critical Race IP, particularly in contrast with Critical Intellectual Property. After exploring the landscape of this developing area of study through its central themes, we draw upon scholarship on public feelings to demonstrate the importance of community building and intimacy-making practices in the growth of Critical Race IP. Public feelings are an implicit and often under-theorized aspect of intellectual property law that comes to the forefront in engagements with race and colonialism. We conclude with a discussion of Critical Race IP as decolonizing praxis that can aid in anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles

Critical Race Theory as Intellectual Property Methodology

This chapter traces the emergence of Critical Race Intellectual Property (CRTIP) as a distinct area of study and activism that builds on the work of Critical Legal Studies and Critical Intellectual Property scholars. Invested in the workings of power - but with particular intersectional attentiveness to race - Critical Intellectual Property works to imagine new, often more socially just, forms of knowledge produce. In this brief chapter, we lay out the origins of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its central methods, articulate a vision of CRT, and contemplate how CRT\u27s interdisciplinary and transnational methods might apply to intellectual property. In accomplishing the latter, we use India\u27s commitments to access to knowledge in the recent Delhi University copyshop case and controversy over Novartis\u27s drug Gleevec to show how CRT\u27s central insights can open possibilities for reading intellectual property law with attunement to structures of racial power

Nirsevimab binding-site conservation in respiratory syncytial virus fusion glycoprotein worldwide between 1956 and 2021: an analysis of observational study sequencing data

Background: Nirsevimab is an extended half-life monoclonal antibody to the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) fusion protein that has been developed to protect infants for an entire RSV season. Previous studies have shown that the nirsevimab binding site is highly conserved. However, investigations of the geotemporal evolution of potential escape variants in recent (ie, 2015-2021) RSV seasons have been minimal. Here, we examine prospective RSV surveillance data to assess the geotemporal prevalence of RSV A and B, and functionally characterise the effect of the nirsevimab binding-site substitutions identified between 2015 and 2021. Methods: We assessed the geotemporal prevalence of RSV A and B and nirsevimab binding-site conservation between 2015 and 2021 from three prospective RSV molecular surveillance studies (the US-based OUTSMART-RSV, the global INFORM-RSV, and a pilot study in South Africa). Nirsevimab binding-site substitutions were assessed in an RSV microneutralisation susceptibility assay. We contextualised our findings by assessing fusion-protein sequence diversity from 1956 to 2021 relative to other respiratory-virus envelope glycoproteins using RSV fusion protein sequences published in NCBI GenBank. Findings: We identified 5675 RSV A and RSV B fusion protein sequences (2875 RSV A and 2800 RSV B) from the three surveillance studies (2015-2021). Nearly all (25 [100%] of 25 positions of RSV A fusion proteins and 22 [88%] of 25 positions of RSV B fusion proteins) amino acids within the nirsevimab binding site remained highly conserved between 2015 and 2021. A highly prevalent (ie, >40·0% of all sequences) nirsevimab binding-site Ile206Met:Gln209Arg RSV B polymorphism arose between 2016 and 2021. Nirsevimab neutralised a diverse set of recombinant RSV viruses, including new variants containing binding-site substitutions. RSV B variants with reduced susceptibility to nirsevimab neutralisation were detected at low frequencies (ie, prevalence <1·0%) between 2015 and 2021. We used 3626 RSV fusion-protein sequences published in NCBI GenBank between 1956 and 2021 (2024 RSV and 1602 RSV B) to show that the RSV fusion protein had lower genetic diversity than influenza haemagglutinin and SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. Interpretation: The nirsevimab binding site was highly conserved between 1956 and 2021. Nirsevimab escape variants were rare and have not increased over time. Funding: AstraZeneca and Sanofi