Law Commons^™

How Oracle Erred: Functionality, Useful Articles, And The Future Of Computer Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In Oracle v. Google (2015), the Federal Circuit addressed whether the " method header " components of a dominant computer program were uncopyrightable as " merging " with the headers' ideas or function. Google had copied the headers to ease the ability of third-party programmers to interact with Google's Android platform. The court rebuffed the copyrightability challenge; it reasoned that because the plaintiff's expression might have been written in alternative forms, there was no " merger " of idea and expression. But the Oracle court may have been asking the wrong question. In Lotus v. Borland (1995), the owner of …

Creative Sparks: Works Of Nature, Selection, And The Human Author, Neal F. Burstyn

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

It is now common knowledge that if you put a bunch of monkeys in a room with a typewriter, they will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. But according to the United States Copyright Office, if you give that same group of monkeys a camera, you do not get copyright in any pictures they may happen to take. In 2011, British wildlife photographer David Slater was in Indonesia when a group of crested black macaques began playing with his camera equipment and snapped some pictures, one of which went viral and proved temporarily profitable for Slater. The popular image, known …

Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Most Moral Of Rights: The Right To Be Recognized As The Author Of One's Work, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to secure for limited times the exclusive right of authors to their writings. Curiously, those rights, as enacted in our copyright laws, have not included a general right to be recognized as the author of one's writings. Yet, the interest in being identified with one's work is fundamental, whatever the conception of the philosophical or policy basis for copyright. The basic fairness of giving credit where it is due advances both the author-regarding and the public regarding aspects of copyright.

Most national copyright laws guarantee the right of attribution (or “paternity”); the leading international copyright …

Copyright And Good Faith Purchasers, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Good faith purchasers for value – individuals who unknowingly and in good faith purchase property from a seller whose own actions in obtaining the property are of questionable legality – have long obtained special protection under the common law. Despite the seller’s own actions being tainted, these purchasers obtain valid title and are free to transfer the property without restriction. Modern copyright law, however, does just the opposite. Individuals who unknowingly, and in good faith, purchase property embodying an unauthorized copy of a protected work are altogether precluded from subsequently alienating such property without running afoul of copyright’s distribution right. …