Law Commons^™

The Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act At Twenty: Has Full Protection Made A Difference?, David Shipley

Scholarly Works

Even though our copyright statutes were silent about architecture until 1990, it was well established that plans, blueprints and models were copyrightable writings under the 1909 Act's category of "drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character," and then as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" under the 1976 Act. The scope of an architect's copyright protection was, however, quite limited. The unauthorized copying of plans or blueprints constituted infringement, but most authorities concluded that plans were not infringed by using them, without the architect's permission, to construct the building they depicted. Moreover, the prevailing view was that an …

Strategies Under Pressure: Usa-China Copyright Dispute, Dexin Tian, Chin-Chung Chao

Communication Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the Chinese and American efforts in keeping the balance of innovation and copyright protection, with an emphasis on China’s strategies under Western, especially American pressure. The research findings are expected to enhance mutual efforts from the two countries to protect copyright and boost innovation and facilitate genuine communication between both sides in their decade-long intellectual property right (IPR) disputes.

Design/methodology/approach – For data collection, this study adopted in-depth interviews of 45 participants who were either copyright holders as publishers and authors, or ordinary consumers in China. Under the theoretical guidance …

An Analysis Of The Fair Use Defense In Dr. Seuss Enterprises V. Penguin, Mary L. Shapiro

Golden Gate University Law Review

This note sets forth the facts and procedural history of Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin, which is the most recent Ninth Circuit copyright decision presenting the affirmative fair use defense. Section III provides a brief background of copyright law and the fair use defense. Section III also presents a historical view of the fact-sensitive, case-by-case analysis of the four statutory fair use defense factors codified in 17 U.S.C. § 107. Section IV examines the Ninth Circuit's decision in Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin, focusing on Seuss Enterprises' copyright infringement claim. Section V critically analyzes the Ninth Circuit's holding, focusing on …

Intellectual Property Law - New Kids On The Block V. News America Publishing, Inc.: New Nominative Use Defense Increases The Likelihood Of Confusion Surrounding The Fair Use Defense To Trademark Infringemen, Derek J. Westberg

Golden Gate University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property - Sega Enterprises Ltd. V. Accolade, Inc.: Setting The Standard On Software Copying In The Computer Software Industry, Julie Aguilar

Golden Gate University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Visual Artists Rights Act Of 1990: Further Defining The Rights And Duties Of Artists And Real Property Owners, Matthew A. Goodin

Golden Gate University Law Review

While eleven states have enacted legislation creating moral rights for artists, until recently there was no federal law addressing the issue. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990,10 which became effective June 1, 1991, creates federal moral rights for artists and contains provisions specifically covering artwork incorporated into buildings. This article will begin with a brief overview of VARA and a detailed analysis of the provisions covering artwork incorporated into buildings. The focus of the article will address the many problems concerning the rights and duties of artists and real property owners under VARA, and will propose solutions to these …

Galoob V. Nintendo: Derivative Works, Fair Use & Section 117 In The Realm Of Computer Programs Enhancements, Christopher A. Kesler

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Note will analyze the holding in Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America. First a background of copyright law relevant to computer technology and video games will be developed. Emphasis will be placed on the issues surrounding exceptions to a copyright holder's exclusive rights and the enhancement of computer programs.

The Visual Artists Rights Act Of 1990: The Art Of Preserving Building Owners' Rights, Keith A. Attlesey

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article will be divided into three sections focusing on the Visual Artists Rights Act's art in buildings provisions, and these provision's effects on artists and building owners. First, the various state art preservation acts will be compared and contrasted with the VARA, focusing particularly on the California Act. Second, the VARA's art in buildings section will be analyzed, focusing on 1) the development of the section, 2) how determining whether art is removable effects artists and building owners, and 3) the dilemma building owners face when art is attached to their buildings without their knowledge or consent. Finally, the …

Renaming That Tune: Aural Collage, Parody And Fair Use, Alan Korn

Golden Gate University Law Review

Although the unauthorized use of sound recordings in derivative collage compositions may in some instances infringe on the copyright of a given composition or sound recording, such use may be protected under a fair use analysis typically accorded works of parody. Therefore this Comment will first provide some historical context for understanding aural appropriation as an evolving 20th century art form with parallels and antecedents in the visual arts. Next comes a discussion of how certain collage-based compositions may violate applicable copyright laws under the 1976 Copyright Act. This Comment will then explore whether the appropriation of pre-existing sound recordings …

Copyright Law, Suheil Joseph Totah

Golden Gate University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Moral Rights And The Realistic Limits Of Artistic Control, Susan Rabin

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment explores the relative positions of musical composers, visual artists, and writers against the available legal protections for their personal rights. As one author recognizes: "[E]ven as American law begins to recognize artists' rights beyond copyright, it does so within a tradition that is concerned for the interests of many parties."

What's New In The Neighborhood - The Export Of The Dmca In Post-Trips Ftas, Anne Hiaring

Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law

This paper will first discuss the historical use of trade regulation to regulate intellectual property law protection outside the U.S., then will discuss the history of the WIPO Internet Treaties, the implementation of them in the DMCA, the provisions of the Induce Act, and the DMCA derived provisions in the 2003 FTA with Singapore.

Media-Rich Input Application Liability, David R. Krohn, Pekarek

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Until recently, media-rich online interactions were mostly unidirectional: multimedia content was delivered by the service provider to the user. Input from the user came almost exclusively in the form of text. Even when searching the Internet for images or audio, a user typically entered text into a search engine. In addition, search engines indexed multimedia content by analyzing not the content itself but the text surrounding it. This is rapidly changing. With the rise of multimedia-capable smartphones and wireless broadband, applications that allow users to search using non-textual inputs are quickly becoming popular. These applications go much further than simply …

In Search Of (Maintaining) The Truth: The Use Of Copyright Law By Religious Organizations, David A. Simon

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The goal of this Article is to do what others have not: determine whether religious organizations should use copyright law to advance their goals of censorship and doctrinal purity. Answering this question entails a two-step analysis. First, the religious motivations must be compared with the underlying theories of, or justifications for, copyright law. Whether those principles align or conflict with religious motivations will inform our normative answer. Regardless of the answer to the aforementioned inquiry, the second step analyzes whether substantive copyright law doctrine facilitates or impedes the achievement of the ends advanced by these religious motivations. As a result …

Rca V. Whiteman: Contested Authorship, Copyright, And The Racial Politics Of The Fight For Property Rights In Musical Recordings In The 1930s, Kurt Newman

Studio for Law and Culture

Between the Progressive Era and World War II, African American jazz music became the source of big profits for some white entrepreneurs in the United States. The encounter between whites and jazz was both a propertization and a privatization of African American group resources. While new technologies of recording and radio broadcasting were critical factors facilitating these cultural enclosures, the sine qua non was the embeddedness of American intellectual property law in the logic of white supremacy. In this paper, I focus on the popular jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman, best known to most contemporary legal scholars as the defendant in …

Copyright Law In The United Arab Emirates In The Digital Age, Brian Fitzgerald, Rami M. Olwan

Rami M Olwan

This article gives an overview of copyright law in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and critically evaluates its operation in the digital era, providing suggestions for reform.

Sequential Musical Creation And Sample Licensing, Peter Dicola

Faculty Working Papers

All musical creation builds on previous works. But using fragments of existing musical works in a new work can often constitute copyright infringement. Copyright law, in cases like Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films (6th Cir. 2005), has recently increased its restrictions on musicians who wish to engage in sampling, defined as the practice of using other creators' sound recordings to create new music. The paper describes a model of copyright holders' and samplers' incentives to create in light of the need to negotiate licenses for sample-based works to avoid violating copyright law. Even in the absence of traditional transaction costs …

The Google Book Settlement And The Fair Use Counterfactual, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

The sprawling Google Book Search litigation began as a dispute between the search engine colossus and a variety of authors and publishers over the legality of Google’s book digitization effort, the Google Book Search project (“GBS” or “Google Book Search”), for the purpose of indexing paper collections and making them searchable on the Internet. However, through the metamorphic power of class action litigation, a dispute over mere indexing and searching has been transformed into a comprehensive agreement over the future of the book as a digital commodity. Understanding this transformation and its implications is the central ambition of this article. …

Promoting Creativity Through Copyright Limitations: Reflections On The Concept Of Exclusivity In Copyright Law, Christophe Geiger

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Do copyright limitations have the ability to promote creativity and innovation in an effective way? This question may initially sound astonishing because this incentive function is traditionally attributed to the exclusive rights and not to their limitations. However, it should not be forgotten that innovation often builds on existing creations. As a consequence, by depriving the copyright holder of the right to consent to certain acts, one might in turn encourage creative uses. In addition, it is possible for legislatures to draft limitations in order to guarantee that the permitted uses are not for free by providing for a just …

Handcrafted Collaborative Copyright, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Tribute essay to Dean Laura Gasaway's tenacious and fearless information access advocacy.

The Copyright Principles Project: Directions For Reform, Jessica D. Litman, Pamela Samuelson, The Copyright Principles Project

Articles

Copyright law performs a number of important functions. It facilitates public access to knowledge and a wide range of uses of creative works of authorship, and, in so doing, it helps educate our populace, enrich our culture, and promote free speech, free expression, and democratic values. It provides opportunities for rights holders to recoup investments in creating and disseminating their works and to enjoy the fruits of whatever success arises from the public's uses of their works. In the process, copyright also plays a role in regulating new technologies and services through which creative works may be accessed. A well-functioning …

Downloading Personhood: A Hegelian Theory Of Copyright Law, Karla M. O'Regan

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article will examine these responses, identifying the competing interests at work in both traditional copyright schemes and contemporary Internet-based criticisms, and put forth a theory of copyright law capable of ad- dressing the needs of these rival interests in an advanced technological era.

Part I delineates some of the more prominent theories copyright scholars have offered in response to the “IP-IT crisis.” Part II attempts to identify the source of these problems by first examining conventional justifications for copyright and the competing interests inherently at work in its conception. Part III identifies three specific factors I argue are particularly …

Unfair Competition And Uncommon Sense, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article discusses Mark McKenna’s Testing Modern Trademark Law’s Theory of Harm as an important step forward in challenging trademark expansionism, going back to basics and asking us to assess for truth value several propositions that now seem so self-evident to lawyers and judges as to not require any empirical support at all. Like McKenna, the author believes that if the law looked for the evidence behind present axioms of harm, it would not find much there. McKenna and the author share an interest in empirical evidence on marketing and a desire to bring its insights to trademark law. But …

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

This Article explores playwrights' common law "play right." Since this conference celebrates the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I begin in England in the 17th Century. I find no trace of a common law playwright's performance right in either the law or the customary practices surrounding 17th and 18th century English theatre. I argue that the nature and degree of royal supervision of theatre companies and performance during the period presented no occasion (and, indeed, left no opportunity) for such a right to arise. I discuss the impetus for Parliament's enactment of a performance right statute in 1833, …

Real Copyright Reform, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

A copyright system is designed to produce an ecology that nurtures the creation, dissemination, and enjoyment of works of authorship. When it works well, it encourages creators to generate new works, assists intermediaries in disseminating them widely, and supports readers, listeners, and viewers in enjoying them. If the system poses difficult entry barriers to creators, imposes demanding impediments on intermediaries, or inflicts burdensome conditions and hurdles on readers, then the system fails to achieve at least some of its purposes. The current U.S. copyright statute is flawed in all three respects. In this Article, I explore how the current copyright …

International Issues: Which Country's Law Applies When Works Are Made Available Over The Internet, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

My topic is International Implications, a topic that would not exist but for the Internet. When access to archival materials was on a physical basis, patrons came to the archive and consulted the material on site; the material did not leave the archive, much less get sent overseas. Even digitized materials, if consulted on site, do not present the problems that arise if the archives puts this material on a website, which is accessible around the world, that ubiquity being the default condition ofthe Internet.

Let us consider some problems that might arise and which have international consequences. First of …

The U.S. Experience With Mandatory Copyright Formalities: A Love/Hate Relationship, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright formalities – conditions precedent to the existence or enforcement of copyright, such as provision of information about works of authorship that will put the public on notice as to a work’s protected status and its copyright ownership, or deposit of copies of the work for the national library or other central authority, or local manufacture of copies of works of foreign origin – have performed a variety of functions in US copyright history. Perhaps of most practical importance today, formalities predicate to the existence or enforcement of copyright can serve to shield large copyright owners who routinely comply with …