Law Commons^™

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One of the problems courts are faced with today is determining what happens with unpublished works registered under the 1909 Act: can only the sheet music filed with the deposit copy come into evidence when comparing two works as substantially similar?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on appeal.8 Later in 2018, in Skidmore v. Zeppelin (“Skidmore”), the Ninth Circuit concluded that when dealing with unpublished works under the 1909 Act, the deposit copy defines the scope of the copyright.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 …