Law Commons^™

Copyright Preemption After The Procd Case: A Market-Based Approach, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

As information becomes increasingly available in digital form, a little noted yet significant legal change is occurring in the way in which information providers use the law to establish the terms under which they market their products. Electronic information providers, in contrast to their hard-copy counterparts, have continually turned to the private law of contract both to supplement and modify the public law of copyright.' While this trend began when most users were relatively large commercial, academic, or governmental enterprises, it accelerated as software providers began to market pre-packaged software to consumers, using the infamous "shrinkwrap" as a device to …