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Re: [dvd-discuss] Re: On State Sovereign Immunity and Senate Bill 2031, Leahy's "IP"Protection Restoration Act




On Wednesday, April 3, 2002, at 09:22  AM, Seth Johnson wrote:

> 2) Leahy's "Intellectual Property Protection Restoration
> Act" is an Act that, to all appearances, may very well have
> been instigated by a content industry partisan listening in
> on the Berkman Institute's DVD-discuss list, on which it was
> recently observed that certain Supreme Court cases had
> affirmed that the States have sovereignty such that they
> would be immune from charges of "intellectual property"
> infringement from the Federal level.  A State can very well,
> if it chooses, grant broad freedoms to its Universities in
> the use of copyrighted and other materials.  The Act
> surfaced scant weeks after the idea was broached on the
> DVD-discuss list.
>

Egad. that's a bit self congratulatory. If I recall correctly, Larry 
Blunk noted a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee (27 Feb 
2002) on "Sovereign Immunity and the Protection of Intellectual 
Property," and mused that it applied to the DeCSS and Elcomsoft cases.

I, and a number of others replied that the hearing might concern _State_ 
sovereign immunity-- as relatively  recent court cases have expanded the 
reigning view of the 11th amendment, and some states have tried 
(successfully) to insulate themselves from copyright and trademark 
infringement lawsuits using this doctrine.

A number of law review articles have urged some sort of action over this 
potential conflict.

Jeremy