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Authorship And The Boundaries Of Copyright: Ideas, Expressions, And Functions In Yoga, Choreography, And Other Works, Christopher Buccafusco
Authorship And The Boundaries Of Copyright: Ideas, Expressions, And Functions In Yoga, Choreography, And Other Works, Christopher Buccafusco
Faculty Scholarship
This essay uses the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Bikram’s Yoga College of India v. Evolation Yoga as an opportunity to analyze the nature of copyrightable authorship and the mechanisms that the law uses to screen out uncopyrightable content from otherwise copyrightable works. I argue that although the court likely reached the right result in Bikram, it did so in a confused and poorly supported manner. The court misunderstood the nature of the idea/expression distinction, the role of section 102(b), and the appropriate mechanism for screening out functional features of works. These aspects of the court’s opinion are widespread in copyright …
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, David Fagundes
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, David Fagundes
Faculty Scholarship
Numerous recent cases illustrate that copyright owners sue for infringement even when an unauthorized use of their work causes them no economic harm. This presents a puzzle from the perspective of copyright theory as well as a serious social problem, since infringement suits designed to remedy non-economic harms tend to stifle rather than encourage creative production. While much scholarship has critiqued copyright’s economic theory from the perspective of authors’ incentives to create, ours is the first to explore this issue from the perspective of owners’ motivations to sue for infringement. We turn to moral psychology, and in particular to moral …
Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites
Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Questionable Origins Of The Copyright Infringement Analysis, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
The Questionable Origins Of The Copyright Infringement Analysis, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
Central to modern copyright law is the test for determining infringement, famously developed by Judge Jerome Frank in the landmark case of Arnstein v. Porter. The “Arnstein test,” which courts continue to apply, demands that the analysis be divided into two components: actual copying – the question whether the defendant did in fact copy – and improper appropriation – the question whether such copying, if it did exist, was unlawful. Somewhat counterintuitively, though, the test treats both components as pure questions of fact, requiring that even the question of improper appropriation go to a jury. This jury-centric approach …