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Evidence

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The Use Of Technical Experts In Software Copyright Cases: Rectifying The Ninth Circuit’S “Nutty” Rule, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell Jan 2021

The Use Of Technical Experts In Software Copyright Cases: Rectifying The Ninth Circuit’S “Nutty” Rule, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell

Faculty Scholarship

Courts have long been skeptical about the use of expert witnesses in copyright cases. More than four decades ago, and before Congress extended copyright law to protect computer software, the Ninth Circuit in Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp. ruled that expert testimony was inadmissible to determine whether Mayor McCheese and the merry band of McDonald’s characters infringed copyright protection for Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo and the other imaginative H.R. Pufnstuf costumed characters. Since the emergence of software copyright infringement cases in the 1980s, substantially all software copyright cases have permitted expert witnesses to aid juries in understanding software code. …


Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey Jan 2014

Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinema verite), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive …