Law Commons^™

Split Chords: Addressing The Federal Circuit Split In Music Sampling Copyright Infringement Cases, Erik J. Badia

Erik Badia

This Note offers a comprehensive analysis of the current circuit split regarding how the de minimis doctrine applies to music sampling in copyright infringement cases. Since the Sixth Circuit's 2005 landmark decision in Bridgeport Music Inc. v. Dimension Films, critics, scholars and even judges have dissected the opinion and its bright line rule of “get a license or do not sample.” In May 2016, the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in VMG Salsoul v. Ciccione. The Ninth Circuit explicitly declined to follow Bridgeport, holding that analyzing a music sampling copyright infringement case requires a substantial similarity analysis, including applying a …

Silent Similarity, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form -- silent movies -- had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases – in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures – are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. …

Debunking The Top Three Myths Of Digital Sampling: An Endorsement Of The Bridgeport Music Court's Attempt To Afford "Sound" Copyright Protection To Sound Recordings, Tracy Reilly

Tracy Reilly