Law Commons^™

Fair Use And The Faces Of Transformation, Part Ii, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

In my last IP Viewpoints entry, I discussed the origin of “transformation” as a major factor in copyright’s fair use doctrine. In particular, I focused on “expressive” transformation, in which the user changes the actual content of the copyrighted work. Taking old works and turning them into something new is the way that culture usually evolves, so it is no surprise that copyright law would sometimes allow users to engage in such conduct without needing to pay for the privilege.

Yet there is also a second kind of transformation, one that does not involve the alteration of the underlying material. …

Google As Copyright Iconoclast, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

Google’s role as a copyright defendant has provided fodder for many an essay in this series, particularly with regard to the Google Books litigation. (Incidentally, that litigation celebrates its tenth anniversary next month – and it’s still going strong.) A more recent Google case, however, is probably just as important, and it provides another interesting lesson in the Internet behemoth’s copyright litigation strategy.

The case is Oracle v. Google. In early 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, the developer of Java, the popular cross-platform programming language. Soon thereafter, Oracle sued Google for copyright infringement, alleging that Google’s Android operating system copied …

Google Books: Game, Set, But Not Match, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

It’s back: Google Books, our favorite topic in this Intellectual Property Viewpoints series. Google Books is the project through which Google has brought its search capability to the text of more than 20 millions books (with the number still growing). To do so, Google must scan the book and convert the scan to readable text. And there’s the problem: Scanning is copying, and copying raises the question of whether the massive project is a massive violation of the copyrights in all those books. Thus the Authors Guild v. Google class action brought by authors and publishers against Google in a …

Google Books: Finally, An Actual Fair Use Ruling!, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

One of our favorite topics in this Intellectual Property Issues series – perhaps the favorite – is Google Books, the massive project through which Google hopes to bring its search capability to the text of all books in the English language. To make a book’s text searchable, however, Google must scan the book. And scanning is copying. And copying usually means copyright infringement. Certainly the many authors and publishers who have sued Google take this view.

There are two ways to avoid infringement when copying a copyrighted book: get a license or prove that the copying constitutes fair use. Many …

The Rebirth Of Copyright As An Opt-In System?, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

For most of the history of Anglo-American copyright law, copyright was an opt-in system: Authors had to jump through certain regulatory hoops if they wanted to prevent others from copying their works without consent. These threshold formalities included registering their works with a government agency, affixing a notice to published copies, depositing exemplars with a centralized library, and more. A failure to comply with the requirements usually meant a diminution in the authors’ copyright entitlement – and in some cases a wholesale forfeiture, under which the works would pass immediately into the public domain.

After some 200 years, however, U.S. …