TM Reading list: Legal Realism: Unfinished Business by Ramsi A. Woodcock

Short and punchy:

For the realist, legal reasoning lacks the determinacy of mathematics because, looked at from the right angle, anything can be analogized to anything else. Trademarks are like easements in that they are both contingent on ownership of something else, but they are also like turtles in that they both start with the letter “T.” The only way to really win an argument through legal reasoning is therefore to assume your conclusion. Mossoff cannot argue that trademark is property because trademark rights happen to have a structure (existence contingent on ownership of a piece of property) that resembles the structure of some other rights that the law treats as genuine property rights. If the law does not actually say that trademark is property — and it cannot because Mossoff’s purpose is to fill that silence with his legal reasoning — then the fact that trademarks merely resemble rights that have been designated as property rights tells nothing about whether trademark rights should be treated as genuine property rights. The resemblance just poses the question whether there should be a rule saying that everything that resembles a property right is a property right. If the argument is that yes, there should be such a rule, then an argument must be made for why that rule should be adopted, returning the argument more or less to where it started, which was to find a way to argue from existing law to the need for recognition of a new rule of law that resolves the question whether trademark should be treated as property.