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Full-Text Articles in Law
How Oracle Erred: Functionality, Useful Articles, And The Future Of Computer Copyright, Wendy J. Gordon
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 …
Brands, Competition Law And Ip, Maurice Stucke
Creative Sparks: Works Of Nature, Selection, And The Human Author, Neal F. Burstyn
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 …
Kernochan Center News - Summer 2016, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts
Kernochan Center News - Summer 2016, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts
Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts
No abstract provided.
A Theory Of Copyright Authorship, Christopher Buccafusco
A Theory Of Copyright Authorship, Christopher Buccafusco
Articles
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to grant rights to “Authors” for their “Writings.” Despite the centrality of these terms to copyright jurisprudence, neither the courts nor scholars have provided coherent theories about what makes a person an author or what makes a thing a writing. This article articulates and defends a theory of copyrightable authorship. It argues that authorship involves the intentional creation of mental effects in an audience. A writing, then, is any fixed medium capable of producing mental effects. According to this theory, copyright may attach to the original, fixed, and minimally creative form or manner …
Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites
Fair Use And The New Transformative, Brian Sites
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Kernochan Center News - Spring 2016, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts
Kernochan Center News - Spring 2016, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts
Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts
No abstract provided.
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, Dave Fagundes
The Moral Psychology Of Copyright Infringement, Christopher Buccafusco, Dave Fagundes
Articles
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 …
The Most Moral Of Rights: The Right To Be Recognized As The Author Of One's Work, Jane C. Ginsburg
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
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. …