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Full-Text Articles in Law
Silent Similarity, Jessica D. Litman
Silent Similarity, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form—silent movies—had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases—in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures—are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. In particular, the problem at the heart of …
Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman
Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
When copyright lawyers gather to discuss fair use, the most common refrain is its alarming expansion. Their distress about fair use’s enlarged footprint seems completely untethered from any appreciation of the remarkable increase in exclusive copyright rights. In the nearly forty years since Congress enacted the 1976 copyright act, the rights of copyright owners have expanded markedly. Copyright owners’ demands for further expansion continue unabated. Meanwhile, they raise strident objections to proposals to add new privileges and exceptions to the statute to shelter non-infringing uses that might be implicated by their expanded rights. Copyright owners have used the resulting uncertainty …
Gaining Momentum: A Review Of Recent Developments Surrounding The Expansion Of The Copyright Misuse Doctrine And Analylsis Of The Doctrine In Its Current Form, Neal Hartzog
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The United States intellectual property ("IP") system is the foundation for incentives for authors and inventors to create and invent so that their work will be distributed to the public for the betterment of society. These incentives, in the form of limited monopolies over creations via patents, copyrights, and trademarks, are becoming increasingly important as the United States depends upon intellectual property to sustain its economy. As the intellectual property industry grows, it becomes vital to preserve the impetus behind its creation: the public good, or more specifically, the public's ability to make use of and enjoy new ideas and …
Profits In Cyberspace: Should Newspaper And Magazine Publishers Pay Freelance Writers For Digital Content?, Rod Dixon Esq.
Profits In Cyberspace: Should Newspaper And Magazine Publishers Pay Freelance Writers For Digital Content?, Rod Dixon Esq.
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
It is remarkable how fast recent trends have driven an increasing number of publishers of magazines, newspapers, and other similar works to port the print version of their works to digital and electronic format in the form of online computer databases and multimedia CDROM technologies. Online computer databases and CD-ROM media can be exceptionally profitable ventures for publishers who convert a preexisting print work into a digital product. However, publishers' profits from digital media may be impaired if there is a question as to whether the publisher has satisfactorily secured the copyright to the material making up the digital media. …
The Public Domain, Jessica D. Litman
The Public Domain, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
This article examines the public domain by looking at the gulf between what authors really do and the way the law perceives them. Part I outlines the basics of copyright as a species of property and introduces the public domain's place within the copyright scheme. Copyright grants authors" ' rights modeled on real property in order to encourage authorship by providing authors with markets in which they can seek compensation for their creations. Because parcels of authorship are intangible, however, the law faces *problems in determining the ownership and boundaries of its property grants. In particular, the concept of "originality," …
The Availability Of Jury Trials In Copyright Infringement Cases: Limiting The Scope Of The Seventh Amendment, Andrew W. Stumpff
The Availability Of Jury Trials In Copyright Infringement Cases: Limiting The Scope Of The Seventh Amendment, Andrew W. Stumpff
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that statutory copyright damages are properly regarded as equitable and hence that no right to a jury trial exists in cases brought to recover such damages. More generally, the Note maintains that the seventh amendment's distinction between equitable and legal causes of action has produced irrational consequences, and proposes that "legal" issues be defined narrowly so as to limit the scope of the seventh amendment. Part I analyzes the debate over statutory copyright damages, concluding that historical and statutory construction arguments require these damages to be construed as legal. Part II examines some of the problems that …