Intellectual Property
The 老澳门开奖结果 works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
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What's at Stake
Laws protecting intellectual property鈥攑atents, copyrights, and trademarks鈥攃an both advance free speech and pose significant threats to civil liberties. The ability to keep books you write or pictures you take from being copied and sold without your permission, for instance, creates a financial incentive to write those books or take those pictures, fostering creativity and encouraging speech. By the same token, overly aggressive enforcement of copyright laws鈥攖he right to copy material鈥攍iterally blocks people from speaking freely.聽
The 老澳门开奖结果 has been at the forefront of trying to find the appropriate balance between protecting the incentive to create and invent and preserving free speech. We brought the successful Association for Molecular Pathology v.聽Myriad聽Genetics U.S. Supreme Court case, which invalidated patents on human genes. We continue to defend free speech in the face of copyright laws restricting technology with lawful, non-infringing uses, and we also work to preserve and expand the 鈥渇air use鈥� doctrine, which provides a key safety valve that permits the use of copyrighted material in journalism, teaching, satire, and other important areas.
With the growth of the Internet and the advance of modern technology, this balance is especially important. Lawmakers have repeatedly proposed measures that tip the balance in the wrong direction, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), both of which we opposed. We must be vigilant to ensure that intellectual property laws continue to serve the First Amendment and do not become the means to gum up the marketplace of ideas.
Laws protecting intellectual property鈥攑atents, copyrights, and trademarks鈥攃an both advance free speech and pose significant threats to civil liberties. The ability to keep books you write or pictures you take from being copied and sold without your permission, for instance, creates a financial incentive to write those books or take those pictures, fostering creativity and encouraging speech. By the same token, overly aggressive enforcement of copyright laws鈥攖he right to copy material鈥攍iterally blocks people from speaking freely.聽
The 老澳门开奖结果 has been at the forefront of trying to find the appropriate balance between protecting the incentive to create and invent and preserving free speech. We brought the successful Association for Molecular Pathology v.聽Myriad聽Genetics U.S. Supreme Court case, which invalidated patents on human genes. We continue to defend free speech in the face of copyright laws restricting technology with lawful, non-infringing uses, and we also work to preserve and expand the 鈥渇air use鈥� doctrine, which provides a key safety valve that permits the use of copyrighted material in journalism, teaching, satire, and other important areas.
With the growth of the Internet and the advance of modern technology, this balance is especially important. Lawmakers have repeatedly proposed measures that tip the balance in the wrong direction, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), both of which we opposed. We must be vigilant to ensure that intellectual property laws continue to serve the First Amendment and do not become the means to gum up the marketplace of ideas.