Washburn Law Journal
Editor's Note
Volume 48, No. 1 (Fall 2008)
In March 2008, Professor Karl Jorda presented the 30th Annual Foulston Siefkin Lecture at the Washburn University School of Law. Professor Jorda, a professor at the Franklin Peirce Law Center, was enshrined in the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame in 2007 and received the 1996 Jefferson Medal of the New Jersey Intellectual Properly Law Association-"the United States' highest honor in intellectual property." In his lecture to Washburn faculty and students, Professor Jorda contended that trade secret protection and patent protection are complementary. He made this claim despite the fact that many scholars argue that trade secrets are a dying form of protection, and despite the fact that the federal government has not enacted protection for trade secrets. Currently the only protection available is provided by state law. Nevertheless, Professor Jorda argued that businesses and inventors should maximize the protection of their intellectual property by exploiting the overlap between patent and trade secret protection.
He develops his theory more fully in his article Patent and Trade Secret Complementariness: An Unsuspected Synergy. Professor Jorda's article provides guidance on the choice between patenting an invention or process and relying solely on trade secret protection. Ultimately, Professor Jorda argues that the use of both types of protection is the wisest and most informed course of action.
Professor Jason Mazzone and Matthew Moore, in their article The Secret Life of Patents, openly challenge Professor Jorda's position. They argue that trade-secret law disrupts the delicate balance established by Congress between private rights and the public domain, and emphasize the importance of less, not more, secrecy.
In an effort to bolster the importance of trade secrets worldwide, Robert Sherwood compares the status of trade secret protection in the United States and Brazil. His article, Trade Secret Protection: Help for a Treacherous Journey, discusses the importance of trade secret protection to a country's overall economic development. Sherwood argues that trade secret protection plays a little-understood but essential role in fostering economic growth, especially in developing countries.
Displaying the breadth of intellectual property law, Professor William Henslee proposes several changes to the method of licensing used in the music industry. His article, Marybeth Peters Is Almost Right: An Alternative to Her Proposals to Reform the Compulsory License Scheme for Music, responds to proposals by Marybeth Peters, the United States Register of Copyrights. Professor Henslee's article goes beyond Peters' proposals, however, and suggests additional changes that would increase the profit-margin for performers without unduly burdening the rest of the music industry.
This Issue concludes with several student-written articles on a variety of topics. In his article The Intersection of Zoning Regulations, Religious House Meetings, and the Constitution, Samuel A. Green considers the constitutional protections that a religious house church might claim. James Pavisian, in his article The Case for Human Ingenuity: How Adderall Has Sullied the Game, discusses the growing issue of stimulant abuse for study purposes and attempts to restore academic integrity to high schools and university campuses. In Can I Get That in Writing?: Established and Emerging Protections of Paternity Rights, Jason Oller considers the Kansas Supreme Court's first-of-a-kind decision denying parental rights to a known sperm donor who did not have a written contract and proposes the use of equity to ensure a donor's paternity rights. Jonathan Stokes examines the history of inverse condemnation claims under Kansas law in Taking Back the Fifth: Why Kansas' Approach to Inverse Condemnation Violates the United States Constitution and Leads to Unnecessary Confusion, arguing that Kansas case law misinterprets statutory language and is inconsistent with the United States Supreme Court's Fifth Amendment jurisprudence. Finally, in Murky "Development": How the Ninth Circuit Exposed Ambiguity Within the Communications Decency Act, and Why Internet Publishers Should Worry, Eric Weslander discusses the confused state of immunity from civil suit for Internet publishers and provides guidance to courts applying the Communications Decency Act.
T.M.B.
