Law and BusinessEssay Preview: Law and BusinessReport this essayContract LawOne area of business law that can be broken down into further categories is contract law. You can write on the effects of a breach of contract in business and some of the defenses one might have to breaching a contract such as an adhesion contract, misrepresentation, fraud and duress. One famous case you could include in your paper is Sondra Locke v. Warner Brothers, a case where Locke sued Warner Brothers for breach of contract and failure to act in good faith. Another case you could include is the case brought against ABC and the Extreme Makeover Home Edition television show where five orphans claimed ABC had them sign an unconscionable contract allowing their host family to evict them from the home that was built by Extreme Makeover.
Tort LawAnother area of business law that can involve many subcategories is tort law. The area of tort law can include slips and falls at work, accidents involving work vehicles, nuisances such as businesses emitting pollution or noise, and manufacturers failing to provide a duty of care to consumers. Some famous cases involving tort law in the business realm are: Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company, where Grimshaw sued Ford under product liability because the Ford Pinto was prone to catching on fire when hit from the rear due to its design; and the case made famous by the movie Erin Brockovich, Aguayo v. PG&E, where residents of a town were exposed to toxins in the air, water and soil.
Intellectual Property LawAnother one of the numerous areas under business law is intellectual property law. This area of the law was virtually non-existent just a couple of decades ago. You could write a paper on trademark infringement, copyright laws and trade secrets. There have been a great deal of cases in the news over the past several years. There was a criminal prosecution involving a former Coca Cola employee who along with two others tried to sell the secret formula of Coke to PepsiCo. There were also the numerous lawsuits that erupted against Napster in 2000 by many artists for “stealing” songs and allowing computer users to download music without paying the artists or producers.
In 1996, a Supreme Court found that the USPTO (the US Copyright Office) permitted and sanctioned the distribution of “public records and/or works of information (including commercial works) by individuals without the right and/or authority to do so under an express or implicit agreement between copyright holders and users of the copyright.” A group of people who had already received a patent or copyright license for the copyrighted concept of music called the PIPE decided to challenge this ruling, and eventually struck down a patent over the concept. It was on this brief and brief about music that they were inspired. And so did you!
The USPTO today has a clear definition of intellectual property law, and with just a few words about its definition, the USPTO clearly has an answer for the issues that are of particular interest here. To begin, this is the “law of the lands.”
Under the USPTO, a “public record” (PDF file) has the legal right to be copied if, with the written consent of the copyright holder, the “public record” can be acquired or retained under a single copyright statute. (Although many people might not have a formal understanding of this, the USPTO notes that it has a “previously unrecognized rule of thumb that does not allow patents to be incorporated.” These include “the right to give one party the first source of information to the other party in exchange for the right to receive it. These patents can be acquired.”) The copyright law of the land must be clear, unambiguous and unambiguous, in so far as a copyright is “protected, subject to public and other laws and regulations.” The statute is clear here about what the “law of the lands” means under USPTO — this is “the copyright law of the land.” The first line of the USPTO definition states that every book and article that is owned by an individual or corporation under the U.S. Copyright Act is subject to the jurisdiction of the Copyright Office.
The USPTO states that, where “the copyright right is exercised, there must be clearly defined exceptions under this statute relating to all public or public domain works, all works of published content, and all works published in any other manner.”
The USPTO further states in their own definition of copyright law, “When the title of a book belongs to a publisher or publisher’s agent, there must be clear and unambiguous rules governing how this title is used, including rules for the ownership of any intellectual property rights, whether published within the US under the USPTO or not at all, and whether the publication of copyright works is protected or restricted under this statute.” The USPTO state that when a book is licensed to be licensed to a publisher because of the public domain at