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No Equitable Relief: The Failings Of The Case Act To Protect Middle-Class Creatives From Copyright Infringement, Eliza James Unrein
No Equitable Relief: The Failings Of The Case Act To Protect Middle-Class Creatives From Copyright Infringement, Eliza James Unrein
William & Mary Business Law Review
Copyright law in the United States incentivizes creative activity for the public benefit by granting creators an exclusive right to control their original works. Many individuals and small businesses rely on this right and the protection of copyright law to build their reputations as artists, create a market for their work, and secure a livelihood for themselves and their families. When someone violates this right and infringes on these individuals’ and small businesses’ copyrights, the forum for seeking redress and preventing future infringement is a lawsuit in federal court. But bringing a copyright infringement claim in federal court is expensive. …
Proving Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell
Proving Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell
William & Mary Law Review
Proof that a defendant actually copied from a copyrighted work is a critical part of a claim for copyright infringement. Indeed, absent such copying, there is no infringement. The most common method of proving copying involves the use of circumstantial evidence, consisting of proof that a defendant had “access” to the protected work, and a showing of “similarities” between the copy and the protected work. In inferring copying from the combination of such evidence, courts have for many decades developed a framework known as the “inverse ratio rule,” which allows them to modulate the level of proof needed on access …