Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Copyrighting Experiences: How Copyright Law Applies To Virtual Reality Programs, Alexis Dunne

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This note will attempt to shed light on the question of what kind of protection copyright law affords VR experiences. Part II discusses the nature of VR experiences and their implementation through specifically tailored VR technology. Part III provides an overview of copyright protection, its limitations, and specifically the history of the copyrightability of computer programs. Parts IV and V outline case law relevant to the discussion of the copyrightability of different types of VR experiences and how that case law similarly or dissimilarly apply to the protection of VR experiences. Part IV focuses on protecting VR experiences as a …

Mashups And Fair Use: The Bold Misadventures Of The Seussian Starship Enterprise, Peter Menell, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, David Nimmer

All Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief filed in the Ninth Circuit appeal of Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix seeks to rectify and restore the balances underlying the Copyright Act of 1976 — particularly the interplay of the Section 106(2) right to prepare derivative works and the fair use doctrine. The District Court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the ground that OH THE PLACES YOU’LL BOLDLY GO! — the defendants’ illustrated book combining Dr. Seuss’s OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! and other Dr. Seuss books with Star Trek characters and themes — made fair use of the Dr. Seuss works.

Based …

Blurred Justice, Allen Madison, Paul Lombardi Ph.D

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

This article discusses a recent controversial copyright case involving inspiration. Marvin Gaye’s family, who owns the copyright to “Got to Give It Up,” claimed that “Blurred Lines,” made famous by Robin Thicke, infringes on the family’s copyright. The Gaye family prevailed at trial. At summary judgment, the Federal District Court permitted the case to go to trial without determining whether there were elements to “Got to Give It Up” that were unprotected as unoriginal, commonplace musical ideas, or musical building blocks. Had the court made such a determination, it is doubtful the case would have gone to trial. The summary …

Jason’S Long Night At Camp Blood: Surveying The Independent Copyrightability Of Jason Voorhees In The Wake Of Horror Inc. V. Miller, Tim Kelly

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

What Are We To Do With Deposit Copies?, Sadie Zurfluh

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

One of the problems courts are faced with today is determining what happens with unpublished works registered under the 1909 Act: can only the sheet music filed with the deposit copy come into evidence when comparing two works as substantially similar? In 2015, the district court in Williams v. Gaye addressed the issue; however, the Ninth Circuit declined to decide the issue on appeal.8 Later in 2018, in Skidmore v. Zeppelin (“Skidmore”), the Ninth Circuit concluded that when dealing with unpublished works under the 1909 Act, the deposit copy defines the scope of the copyright. Part I of this comment …

Care For A Sample? De Minimis, Fair Use, Blockchain, And An Approach To An Affordable Music Sampling System For Independent Artists, Sean M. Corrado

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Thanks, in part, to social media and the digital streaming age of music, independent artists have seen a rise in popularity and many musicians have achieved mainstream success without the affiliation of a major record label. Alongside the growth of independent music has come the widespread use of music sampling. Sampling, which was once depicted as a crime perpetrated by hip-hop artists, is now prevalent across charttopping hits from all genres. Artists have used sampling as a tool to integrate cultures, eras, and styles of music while experimenting with the bounds of musical creativity. Artists whose works are sampled have …

What Protections Are Available To Graffiti Artists?, Molly Lamovec

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Harms: A Paradigm For The Twenty-First Century, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay is part of a larger book project that investigates how contemporary intellectual property debates, especially in the digital age, are taking place over less familiar terrain: fundamental rights and values. Its argument draws from the diverse, personal accounts of interviews from everyday creators and innovators and focuses on descriptions of harms and, as some say “abuses,” they suffer within their practicing communities. The harms are not described are the usual harms that intellectual property law is understood to prevent. Typically, intellectual property injuries are conceived in individual terms and as economic injuries. An infringer is a thief. …

Authors And Machines, Jane C. Ginsburg, Luke Ali Budiardjo

Faculty Scholarship

Machines, by providing the means of mass production of works of authorship, engendered copyright law. Throughout history, the emergence of new technologies tested the concept of authorship, and courts in response endeavored to clarify copyright’s foundational principles. Today, developments in computer science have created a new form of machine, the “artificially intelligent” (AI) system apparently endowed with “computational creativity.” AI systems introduce challenging variations on the perennial question of what makes one an “author” in copyright law: Is the creator of a generative program automatically the author of the works her process begets, even if she cannot anticipate the contents …

Existential Copyright And Professional Photography, Jessica Silbey, Eva Subotnik, Peter Dicola

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual property law has intended benefits, but it also carries certain costs — deliberately so. Skeptics have asked: Why should intellectual property law exist at all? To get traction on that overly broad but still important inquiry, we decided to ask a new, preliminary question: What do creators in a particular industry actually use intellectual property for? In this first-of-its-kind study, we conducted thirty-two in-depth qualitative interviews of photographers about how copyright law functions within their creative and business practices. By learning the actual functions of copyright law on the ground, we can evaluate and contextualize existing theories of intellectual …