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Intellectual Property Law Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law

Judges Playing Jury: Constitutional Conflicts In Deciding Fair Use On Summary Judgment, Ned Snow Dec 2010

Judges Playing Jury: Constitutional Conflicts In Deciding Fair Use On Summary Judgment, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

Issues of fair use in copyright cases are usually decided at summary judgment. But it was not always so. For well over a century, juries routinely decided these issues. The law recognized that fair use issues were highly subjective and thereby inherently factual — unfit for summary disposition by a judge. Today, however, all this has been forgotten. Judges are characterizing factual issues as purely legal so that fair use may be decided at summary judgment. Even while judges acknowledge that reasonable minds may disagree on these issues, they characterize the issues as legal, preventing them from ever reaching a …


Copyright Law And Mash-Ups: A Policy Paper, Matthew Rimmer Jul 2010

Copyright Law And Mash-Ups: A Policy Paper, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

This report provides an analysis of the cultural, policy and legal implications of ‘mash-ups’. This study provides a short history of mash-ups, explaining how the current ‘remixculture’ builds upon a range of creative antecedents and cultural traditions, which valorised appropriation, quotation, and transformation. It provides modern examples of mash-ups, such as sound recordings, musical works, film and artistic works, focusing on works seen on You Tube and other online applications. In particular, it considers -* Literary mash-ups of canonical texts, including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Wind Done Gone, After the Rain, and 60 Years Later;* Artistic mash-ups, highlighting …


Complimentary Creation: Protecting Fan Fiction As Fair Use, Rachel L. Stroude Jan 2010

Complimentary Creation: Protecting Fan Fiction As Fair Use, Rachel L. Stroude

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This Comment discusses, by focusing on the treatment of fan fiction, the tension a court faces each time it encounters a fair use doctrine analysis. First, this Comment describes the nature of fan fiction, the two types of fan fiction referential works and participatory works, and the potential commerciality of fan fiction. Second, this Comment analyzes courts' treatment of referential works and explains why courts have not encountered participatory works. Next, this Comment discusses that while courts have guided authors of referential works regarding how to create a non-infringing work, courts have yet to consider how to protect participatory works. …


Copyright’S Twilight Zone: Digital Copyright Lessons From The Vampire Blogosphere, Jacqueline D. Lipton Jan 2010

Copyright’S Twilight Zone: Digital Copyright Lessons From The Vampire Blogosphere, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Web 2.0 technologies, characterized by user-generated content, raise new challenges for copyright law. Online interactions involving reproductions of copyrighted works in blogs, online fan fiction, and online social networks do not comfortably fit existing copyright paradigms. It is unclear whether participants in Web 2.0 forums are creating derivative works, making legitimate fair uses of copyright works, or engaging in acts of digital copyright piracy and plagiarism. As online conduct becomes more interactive, copyright laws are less effective in creating clear signals about proscribed conduct. This article examines the application of copyright law to Web 2.0 technologies. It suggests that social …


Beyond Fair Use, Gideon Parchomovsky, Philip J. Weiser Jan 2010

Beyond Fair Use, Gideon Parchomovsky, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

For centuries, the fair use doctrine has been the main--if not the exclusive--bastion of user rights. Originating in the English courts of equity, the doctrine permitted users, under appropriate circumstances, to employ copyrighted content without the rightsholder's consent. In the current digital media environment, however, the uncertainty that shrouds fair use and the proliferation of technological protection measures undermine the doctrine and its role in copyright policy. Notably, the enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures even for fair use purposes, has diminished the ability of fair use to counterbalance a copyright …