Mary LaFrance is the IGT Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law.Professor LaFrance's article, titled "A Material World: Using Trademark Law to Override Copyright's First Sale Rule for Imported Copies," was recently selected as one of the best intellectual property law review articles of the year by Thomson Reuters. It will be published in the 2015 anthology of the Intellectual Property Law Review by Thomson Reuters.
The article originally appeared in Volume 21, Issue 1 of the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review.
In the article, she writes, "When the Supreme Court held that the first sale rule of copyright law permits the unauthorized importation and domestic sale of lawfully made copies of copyrighted works, regardless of where those copies were made, copyright owners lost much of their ability to engage in territorial price discrimination. Publishers, film and record producers, and software and videogame makers could no longer use copyright law to prevent the importation and domestic resale of gray market copies ... However ... Copyright owners can invoke trademark law to prevent unauthorized parallel imports of lawful copies of their works as well as domestic distribution of those imported copies, thereby achieving an end-run around copyright’s first sale rule."
Professor LaFrance’s teaching and research interests include domestic and international intellectual property law, as well as the taxation of intellectual property.
