Jeanne Fromer
Professor of Law
An Information Theory of Copyright Law, an article that utilizes information theory, a branch of applied mathematics that quantifies information and suggests optimal ways of transmitting the information, to answer important questions related to what sorts of works copyright law seeks to encourage. The project explores many of the central doctrines of copyright law and proposes that copyright law seeks to preserve certain forms of information, sometimes in redundant ways and at other times in quite sparse ways. It further considers whether it is better to have distinct creators communicating these valuable types of information or to unify particular communications of information in a single creator.
The State(s) of Copyright Law, an article showing that there is an ignored actor in the development of copyright law: the states. The article includes a review of all post-1976 state court decisions and current state laws that mention copyright to show how state courts are influencing copyright policy, despite Congress’s 1976 copyright revision giving states far less say in copyright matters. The article discusses the costs and benefits, as well as the legality, of state intervention in copyright law.
Empirical Study of Substantial Similarity in Courts, an empirical study of all district and appellate court decisions on substantial similarity in copyright law to assess the effect of various doctrinal choices on case outcomes and understand the implications of the Second and Ninth Circuits’ different frameworks for analyzing copyright infringement. This project is in collaboration with Barton Beebe (NYU School of Law), Neil Netanel (UCLA School of Law) and Matthew Sag (Loyola University School of Law).
Experimental Studies of Incentives in Intellectual Property, a series of experiments testing the differential effects of rules conditioning protection of creators’ work on the creators achieving certain thresholds of creativity. The experiments are meant to model existing copyright and patent laws, which set very different thresholds for the amount of creativity necessary to secure IP rights. The project will culminate in an article describing the data gathered and discussing the implication for IP law and policy. This project is in collaboration with Christopher Sprigman (NYU School of Law), and Christopher Buccafusco (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law).
Professor Fromer's articles on SSRN
