Law Commons^™

A Pre-History Of Performing Rights In Anglo-American Copyright Law, Derek Miller

Studio for Law and Culture

Statutes creating performing rights--the subset of copyright that secures the right to perform a work – first appeared in the United Kingdom in 1833, and in the United States in 1856. As I explore in the larger project of which this paper forms a part, during the decades that followed these laws’ passage, jurists and theater-makers defined performance as a marketable commodity, what I call the performance-commodity. They did so by negotiating between performance’s aesthetic value and its economic value. This commodity-centered approach was absent from most copyright lawsuits about performance before 1833 and 1856 because jurists and litigants did …

Fragmented Literal Similarity In The Ninth Circuit: Dealing With Fragmented Takings Of Jazz And Experimental Music, Michael Zaken

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

Newcomers to jazz often ask: Is it true that jazz is all improvised? Somehow the casual and romantic notion that jazz is generated in an entirely spontaneous manner has become deeply rooted in our society.

The notator of any jazz solo, or blues, has no chance of capturing what in effect are the most important elements of the music.... A printed musical example of an Armstrong solo, or of a Thelonious Monk solo, tells us almost nothing except the futility of formal musicology when dealing with jazz.

The difficulty of applying standard infringement measures to musical compositions in a way …

Constitutional Hazard:The California Resale Royalty Act And The Futility Of State-Level Implementation Of Droit De Suite Legislation, Nithin Kumar

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

Répétition d’un Ballet, the famous painting by French artist Edgar Degas, sold for $401,000 in 1965. The jubilant seller bragged that Degas originally asked a mere $100 for the painting. In his early career, celebrated American artist Norman Rockwell sold original works like Homecoming Marine and Breaking Home Ties for a few hundred dollars each. In the last decade, these paintings were resold for $9.2 million and $15.4 million at Sotheby’s auctions, but the Rockwell estate received nothing in these transactions. Over the centuries, great wealth in the arts has rarely translated into great wealth for the artist. Since …

A Restatement Of Copyright Law As More Independent And Stable Treatise, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article maps the problematic consequences of over reliance by judges, lawyers and policy makers on copyright law treatises, with a particular focus on the negative effects Nimmer on Copyright has had on the evolution of various copyright law doctrines. It proposes that an ALI Restatement of Copyright Law is needed to create a reference tool that is transparently authored and edited.

Taming The "Frankenstein Monster": Copyright Claim Compatibility With The Class Action Mechanism, Renee G. Stern

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

In a 2013 opinion denying class certification to a putative class of copyright holders in Football Association Premier League Ltd. v. YouTube, Inc., Judge Stanton of the Southern District of New York wrote:

Generally speaking, copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment. They have superficial similarities .... Thus, accumulation of all the copyright claims, and claimants, into one action will not simplify or unify the process of their resolution, but multiply its difficulties over the normal one-by-one adjudications of copyright cases.

Judge Stanton went on to characterize the case as a “Frankenstein monster posing as a class action” …

The Demise Of The Copyright Act In The Digital Realm: Re-Engineering Digital Delivery Models To Circumvent Copyright Liability After Aereo, Megan Larkin

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

This Note argues that the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the Transmit Clause eviscerates the meaning of “public” within the digital realm and has created a blueprint for business models to completely circumvent copyright liability. Part I provides the background of the public performance right, focusing on the role that technology has played in the addition of the Transmit Clause and on relevant judicial interpretation. Part II argues that the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the Transmit Clause was improper; it tests the court’s blueprint by re-engineering past business models to show how they could have evaded liability. Part III proposes that, …

Exceptional Authorship: The Role Of Copyright Exceptions In Promoting Creativity, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

A lawyer for an immense copyright-exploiting corporation, casting himself as a defender of authors’ rights, challenged his interlocutor’s incredulity with the following assertion: given today’s diversity of authors, ‘more of them depend on limitations and exceptions than on exclusive rights’. Some might cringe at the resemblance of this credo to Orwell’s ‘Freedom Is Slavery!’ Nonetheless, I would like to take seriously the proposition that today’s authors need copyright exceptions and limitations more than they need exclusive rights.

First, I will test the proposition by examining what one might call authorship-oriented exceptions, from ‘fair abridgement’ in early English cases to the …

Afterword: Conferring About The Conference, Jessica Silbey, Aaron Perzanowski, Marketa Trimble

Faculty Scholarship

We heard at the conference five rich papers, all addressing in one way or another the conference's theme: "ReCalibrating Copyright: Continuity, Contemporary Culture, and Change." Professor Craig Joyce, in his capacity as conference convener, asked us as Fellows, at the end of the day of presentations and discussions, how we thought the Presenters' papers spoke to each other and to the conference's focus.

Judging Similarity, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Irina D. Manta, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law’s requirement of substantial similarity requires a court to satisfy itself that a defendant’s copying, even when shown to exist as a factual matter, is quantitatively and qualitatively enough to render it actionable as infringement. By the time a jury reaches the question of substantial similarity, however, the court has usually heard and analyzed a good deal of evidence about: the plaintiff, the defendant, the creativity involved, the process through which the work was created, the reasons for which the work was produced, the defendant’s own creative efforts and behavior, and, on occasion, the market effects of the defendant’s …

Unplanned Coauthorship, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Unplanned coauthorship refers to the process by which contributors to a creative work are treated by copyright law as coauthors of the work based entirely on their observable behavior during its creation. The process entails a court imputing the status of coauthors to the parties ex post, usually during a claim for copyright infringement. For years now, courts and scholars have struggled to identify a coherent rationale for unplanned coauthorship and situate it within copyright’s set of goals and objectives. This Article offers a novel framework for understanding the rules of unplanned coauthorship using insights from theories of shared intentionality. …