Law Commons^™

Copyright Law, David Vaver

David Vaver

The explosive growth in communication technologies has put enormous strains on the law, no more so than on the law of copyright. In this book, David Vaver examines how the modern law of copyright and moral rights is coping with the new technologies. He provides a detailed, authoritative analysis of the most recent changes to the Copyright Act and their impact on copyright holders and users, including educational institutions, libraries, and archives. Copyright Law, like its companion volume Intellectual Property Law by the same author, is written in a lively non-technical style. It examines in greater depth than the earlier …

Copyright: Cases And Commentary On The Canadian And International Law, Second Edition, Barry Sookman, Steven Mason, Carys Craig

Carys Craig

Copyright law grants exclusive rights for limited terms to the authors of musical, literary, dramatic and artistic works. With the shift towards an information economy and the rapid development of digital technologies, copyright is fast becoming one of the most dynamic, critical and controversial areas of Canadian law and policy. This casebook presents extracts from the leading cases from both Canadian and international jurisprudence to illustrate the legal concepts, doctrinal evolution and current approaches to copyright issues. The revised second edition reflects the important case law and statutory amendments that have taken place over the past five years, including the …

Privacy, Copyright, And Letters, Jeffrey Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

The focus of this Essay is the privacy of letters – the written manifestations of thoughts, intents, and the recollections of facts directed to a person or a narrowly defined audience. The importance of this privacy is captured in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan and in the film based on the novel. The fulcrum from which the action springs is a letter that is read by someone to whom it was not addressed. The result is literally life-changing, even disastrous for a number of characters. One person dies, two people seemingly meant for each other are torn apart and …

A Functional Approach To Copyright Policy, Robert Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

This essay results from a half-century spent observing the development and stagnation of a once vital music form, jazz. Curiosity spurred its evolution when a successor to John Coltrane failed to emerge within a few years of his early death. Over the ensuing decades, I became concerned that advancing technology and the 1976 Copyright Act had fundamentally undermined our cultural ecology. Unnoticed over the past century, technology has changed our experience of expressive culture, (the stories, images, and melodies that copyright most strongly protects), from live performance in social settings to solitary consumption of recorded media. Neurologically and physiologically this …

Ip Law Book Review: Configuring The Networked Self: Law, Code, And The Play Of Every Day Practice, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Julie Cohen's Configuring the Networked Self is an extraordinarily insightful book. Cohen not only applies extant theory to law; she also distills it into her own distinctive social theory of the information age. Thus, even relatively short sections of chapters of her book often merit article-length close readings. I here offer a brief for the practical importance of Cohen’s theory, and ways it should influence intellectual property policy and scholarship.

Court: Reselling Books Bought Abroad Isn't A Copyright Violation - (Quotes: Mark Mckenna), Npr’S Morning Edition, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

Court: Reselling Books Bought Abroad Isn't A Copyright Violation interview by Dan Bobkoff quotes Mark McKenna, NPR’s Morning Edition March 20, 2013 DAN BOBKOFF, BYLINE: Once you buy a book in the U.S., you're free to lend it, throw it away or sell it. This is called the First Sale Doctrine, says law professor Mark McKenna of Notre Dame. MARK MCKENNA: This is why there are used book stores. BOBKOFF: But the question at stake in this case was whether that still applies to products sold and made in another country. Grad student Supap(ph) Kirksang(ph) made tens of thousands of …

What's The Frequency, Kenneth? Channeling Doctrines In Trademark Law, Mark Mckenna

Mark P. McKenna

This paper was published as a chapter in Intellectual Property and Information Wealth (Peter Yu, ed., Praeger 2007). The chapter describes several doctrines that courts have developed to limit the scope of trademark protection where there is a risk of interference with the patent or copyright schemes. It also suggests that courts have in some cases overemphasized the subject matter of protection and underemphasized parties' ability to use trademark law to capture the types of economic benefits for which patent and copyright protection are presumed necessary.

Open Access Interview With Michael W. Carroll, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Copyright In An Era Of Information Overload: Toward The Privileging Of Categorizers, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Environmental laws are designed to reduce negative externalities (such as pollution) that harm the natural environment. Copyright law should adjust the rights of content creators in order to compensate for the ways they reduce the usefulness of the information environment as a whole. Every new work created contributes to the store of expression, but also makes it more difficult to find whatever work one wants. Such search costs have been well-documented in information economics. Copyright law should take information overload externalities like search costs into account in its treatment of alleged copyright infringers whose work merely attempts to index, organize, …

Global Warming Trend? The Creeping Indulgence Of Fair Use In International Copyright Law, Richard Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

In her article Toward an International Fair Use Doctrine in 2000, Professor Ruth Okediji hypothesized that the internationalization of copyright law would threaten the freedom of expression if some doctrine akin to U.S. “fair use” were not established as an international legal norm. Acknowledging the central concern of the Okediji article, this paper analyzes research and legal developments since that article to determine how the present state of the “fair use” concept in international copyright law differs from its state in 2000. The paper concludes that in the last eight years, though there has been no formal adoption of an …

From Music Tracks To Google Maps: Who Owns Computer-Generated Works?, Mark Perry, Thomas Margoni

Mark Perry

Increasingly the digital content used in everyday life has little or no human intervention in its creation. Typically, when such content is delivered to consumers it comes with attached claims of copyright. However, depending on the jurisdiction, approaches to ownership of computer-generated works vary from legislated to uncertain. In this paper we look at the various approaches taken by the common law, such as in Canada, and the legislative approach taken in the United Kingdom. The options for how computer-generated works may be treated and suggestions for their best placement in copyright are discussed.

Open Content Licensing Of Public Sector Information And The Risk Of Tortious Liability For Australian Governments, Cheryl Foong

Cheryl Foong

There has been an increasing interest by governments worldwide in the potential benefits of open access to public sector information (PSI). However, an important question remains: can a government incur tortious liability for incorrect information released online under an open content licence? This paper argues that the release of PSI online for free under an open content licence, specifically a Creative Commons licence, is within the bounds of an acceptable level of risk to government, especially where users are informed of the limitations of the data and appropriate information management policies and principles are in place to ensure accountability for …

Calibrating Copyright Statutory Damages To Promote Speech, Alan Garfield

Alan E Garfield

Copyright and the First Amendment exist in tension. The Supreme Court acknowledges this tension but says that copyright law resolves it with two built-in free speech safeguards: (1) by protecting only the expression of ideas and not the ideas themselves (the idea/expression dichotomy); and (2) by allowing the use of expression under certain circumstances (the fair use doctrine). The problem is that these doctrines are notoriously vague, so users often cannot know ex ante whether their uses will be immune from liability. This unpredictably might be tolerable if users could be confident that, if they were subject to liability, any …

The Sine Qua Non Of Copyright, Deborah Hussey Freeland

Deborah M. Hussey Freeland

The United States Supreme Court treats originality as the sine qua non of copyright. How can this abstract quality best be recognized under the law, particularly in the difficult case of multiply produced works? This article grapples with controverted definitions of "original" and "copy," analyzing the positions and interests of various players in the art world with respect to what should count as an original work. Using the case of bronze sculptures that various parties seek to attribute to Auguste Rodin and discussing their status under national and international laws, this article identifies and calls for these laws to converge …