Passage - General Questions

[Administrator]

Passage Discussion

VIEWSTAMP Analysis:

The author’s is the primary Viewpoint presented, along with the (perfectly aligned) perspective of “trademark owners” (that is, the manufacturers of the gray marketed goods).

The Structure of the passage is as follows:

• Paragraph One: Here the author defines gray marketing, offers one reason why it happens (quantity discounts), and introduces one type of gray marketing (channel flow diversion).
  
  Paragraph Two: The second type of gray marketing is presented and defined (parallel importation).
  
  Paragraph Three: This is where it becomes clear that the author sides with the trademark owners, whose arguments are listed (and “justified,” by the author’s judgment).
  
  Paragraph Four: Three different legal theories that have been applied to gray marketing cases are presented. Only one of these theories provides trademark protection against gray marketing, and by no surprise, this is the theory that the author supports (and expects to be consistently applied).

Tone: This author has clear convictions about this issue, but the argument is based on reason, as is the author’s optimistic outlook about the future of gray market regulation.

The primary Arguments are those of the copyright owners (with whom the author also clearly agrees), and, in a sense, the various courts which apply the three legal theories discussed.

The Main Point of this passage is to introduce the concept of gray marketing, why it happens, arguments against it, and theories applied to it, and for the author to state a preference for the territorial theory, which provides to trademark owners some protection against gray marketing.

[kmitchelljohnson]

This is beautiful. I had all these "thoughts" as I did my VIEWSTAMP, but looking at mine compared to this, mine is clearly quite sparse. I'm inputting my VIEWSTAMP bellow, but ultimately I got 3/7 on this exercise. Is my VIEWSTAMP too sparse, or is this likely a failing of me extrapolating the information properly from my analysis? I felt much more confident in my work on the Authoritarian Leaders passage, and got 6/6 on it, so I'm wondering if I missed something from the reading, or if I missed something from within my own VIEWSTAMP. If that makes sense.



View: Greymarkets upset trademark owners, and should be curtailed
Tone: Neutral support of curtailing
Argument: Territoriality is the most effecting method of curtailment, and should be broadly adopted

Para 1: Definition of grey markets, and introduction to channel flow

Para 2: Introduction of parallel importing

Para 3: Introduction of arguments against grey markets

Para 4: Three legal arguments against grey markets, and author's view that territoriality is the best.

[Adam Tyson]

I think most of what you have here is good, kmitchelljohnson, but I think you missed some strong tone indicators along the way. There is nothing neutral about this author's tone, other than in their recitation of definitions and examples in the first two paragraphs (and even there, in the second paragraph, when the author mentions "proper" channels it indicates a dislike for gray marketing. It's improper.)

Starting in the third paragraph the author clearly takes the side of the trademark owners and against gray marketing, The last paragraph is full of tone indicators, starting with a harsh criticism of the current legal framework, calling it confusing. And any time an LSAT author says a legal scheme is unpredictable ("variously and confusingly applied") you can take that as a negative view, because the general bias in legal circles is that predictability and clarity are prized.

And then finally there is the claim at the end about the territoriality theory being both inevitable and desirable. The author is strongly in favor of the one theory that affords trademark owners at least some limited protection. Nothing neutral about it!

To see what got in your way on the questions we would need to know which questions you missed, and also how you attempted to answer them. Were you relying on your memory, or were you looking up the answers in the text after reading the question? How did you decide between multiple answers if more than one looked good? Hit us up in the threads about the specific questions if you want to follow up on those, and we'll see if we can point you in the right direction!