Law Commons^™

"It's A Little Known Fact" That Copyright Law Is In Conflict With The Right Of Publicity, Madeline O'Connor

Touro Law Review

This Comment will analyze Section 102 of the Copyright Act,the right of publicity in common law and as codified in state statutes,and Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, and the analyses and applicationof these laws by different circuits. Further, this Comment willsuggest alternative tests, modeled upon trademark law, that courtsmay use in the future in similar situations to reach more equitable determinations.

Public Performance Rights In The Digital Age: Fixing The Licensing Problem, G. S. Hans

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Recent technological advances have allowed consumers to reinvent the mixtape. Instead of being confined to two sides of an audiocassette, people can now create playlists that stretch for hours and days on their computers, tablets, mobile devices, and MP3 players. This, in turn, has affected how people consume and listen to music, both in isolation and in groups. As individuals and business owners in the United States use devices to store, organize, and listen to music, they inevitably run up against the boundaries of U.S. copyright law. In general, these laws affect businesses more often than private individuals, who can …

Creating Capital From Culture - Re-Thinking The Provisions On Expressions Of Folklore In Ghana's Copyright Law, Gertrude Torkornoo

Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law

This paper examines three tensions created by the manner in which Ghana’s TCEs are regulated under the Copyright Act. The first tension is the divergence between the context of private rights and communally created works. While one of the fundamental principles of copyright law is to reward specific and identifiable sources of creativity, Act 690 grants copyright in communally created art. There is also divergence between the usual designated duration of copyright and the antiquated nature of most expressions of folklore, including kente and adinkra expressions.

The second tension arises from the fact that the placement of copyright in Ghana’s …

The Case Against Combating Bittorrent Piracy Through Mass John Doe Copyright Infringement Lawsuits, Sean B. Karunaratne

Michigan Law Review

Today, the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing medium is the BitTorrent protocol. While BitTorrent itself is not illegal, many of its users unlawfully distribute copyrighted works. Some copyright holders enforce their rights by suing numerous infringing BitTorrent users in a single mass lawsuit. Because the copyright holder initially knows the putative defendants only by their IP addresses, it identifies the defendants anonymously in the complaint as John Does. The copyright holder then seeks a federal court's permission to engage in early discovery for the purpose of learning the identities behind the IP addresses. Once the plaintiff knows the identities of the …

Copyright In The Classroom: Why Comprensive Copyright Education Is Necessary In United States K-12 Education Curriculum, Eric Perrott

Intellectual Property Brief

No abstract provided.

Reinforcing The Tower Of Babel: The Impact Of Copyright Law On Fansubbing, Latoya D. Rembert-Lang

Intellectual Property Brief

No abstract provided.

A New Look For The Fashion Industry: Redesigning Copyright Law With The Innovative Design Protection And Piracy Protection Act (Idpppa), Brittany West

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Introduced in Congress in August 2010, the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act (IDPPPA) would amend 17 U.S.C. § 1301 to extend copyright protection to unique, distinguishable, non-trivial, and non-utilitarian fashion designs. The fashion industry in the United States is currently a $200 billion industry which is afforded limited intellectual property protection compared to foreign markets. This article explores the applicability of the existing Copyright Act to fashion designs and argues that the IDPPPA takes a narrow approach to eliminate ambiguity present in former bills attempting to amend copyright law. The IDPPPA would incentivize innovation, the ultimate goal of …

Music As Biotech: Remixing The Ubmta For Use With Digital Samples, Adam G. Holofcener

Intellectual Property Brief

No abstract provided.

Tweet Me Fairly: Finding Attribution Rights Through Fair Use In The Twittersphere, Adam S. Nelson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Who Could Possibly Be Against A Treaty For The Blind?, Aaron Scheinwald

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Note presents the history of the problem of VIPs' restricted access to information, a legal-realist analysis of the reasons for and against a WIPO treaty for the blind, and the contours of a best-case solution.

Copyright And The Vagueness Doctrine, Bradley E. Abruzzi

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Constitution's void-for-vagueness doctrine is itself vaguely stated. The doctrine does little to describe at what point vague laws-other than those that are entirely standardless-become unconstitutionally vague. Rather than explore this territory, the Supreme Court has identified three collateral factors that affect its inclination to invalidate a law for vagueness: (1) whether the law burdens the exercise of constitutional rights, (2) whether the law is punitive in nature, and (3) whether the law overlays a defendant-protective scienter requirement. Measured against these factors, copyright law does not meet the vagueness doctrine's minimum requirement of fair notice to the public. Copyright, by …

Student Intellectual Property Issues On The Entrepreneurial Campus, Bryce C. Pilz

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This article examines issues that are more frequently arising for universities concerning intellectual property in student inventions. It seeks to identify the issue, explain the underlying law, identify actual and proposed solutions to these issues, and explain the legal ramifications of these potential solutions.

Argh, Matey! The Faux-Pas Of The Sopa (Stop Online Piracy Act), Anna S. Han

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Earlier, I posted about a network neutrality case, Verizon v. FCC, which could have far-reaching consequences for the Internet industry. Another concerted attempt to regulate the Internet, disguised in the form of a piracy protection bill, recently came before the House Judiciary Committee and garnered widespread disapproval. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of twelve co-sponsors introduced the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (“SOPA”) on October 26, 2011, which punishes websites that are accused of facilitating copyright infringement. Although touted by its supporters as a weapon against foreign sites that steal and sell American inventions, SOPA is problematic because …

Fighting The First Sale Doctrine: Strategies For A Struggling Film Industry, Sage Vanden Heuvel

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, grants the owners of a copy of a copyrighted work the right to sell, rent, or lease that copy without permission from the copyright owner. This doctrine, first endorsed by the Supreme Court in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, was established at a time when the owner of a good necessarily had to forego possession in order to sell or lease the item to another.[...] The changes in technology and industry over the past two decades threaten to upend this balance. In today's digital world, an owner of a copy of …

Kernochan Center News - Spring 2012, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.

Technology Drives The Law: A Foreword To Trends And Issues In Techology & The Law, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

Technology has always been a motivating force of change in the law. The creation of new machines and development of novel methods of achieving goals force the law to adapt with new and responsive rules. This is particularly true whenever a new technology transforms society. Whether it is increasing industrialization or computerization, pre-existing legal concepts rarely survive the transition unaltered - new prescriptions are announced while old ones disappear.

The Role Of Copyright In The Protection Of The Environment And The Fight Against Climate Change: Is The Current Copyright System Adequate?, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

At first sight, it may not seem like copyright plays a role in the fight against climate change and more generally the protection of the environment. But in many ways, it does, and it does so with, maybe surprisingly, quite some importance. Indeed, copyright works can be extremely varied. In the environmental field, they can range from eco-friendly architectural plans and buildings, literature (e.g. scientific articles, newspaper or magazine articles, instruction manuals detailing processes that accomplish environmental benefits), charts, diagrams, maps, photographs, even films, about the weather, climate, the size of glaciers, etc., to software and databases used for forecast …

Recent French Decisions On Database Protection: Towards A More Consistent And Compliant Approach With The Court Of Justice’S Case Law?, Estelle Derclaye

Estelle Derclaye

Since the official date of implementation of the Database Directive , namely the 1 January 1998, 14 years have now already passed. During this decade and a half, French courts have handed down around 30 decisions on database protection. Between 1998 and 2004, the year when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down its first four parallel rulings on the sui generis right , the French case law on the sui generis right was quite erratic. Admittedly, such state of affairs was not dissimilar in other Member States owing to the sheer novelty of the sui …

Seamaster-Ing The First Sale Doctrine: A Tripartite Framework For Navigating The Applicability Of Section 109(A) To Gray Market Goods, Daniela Alvarado

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Antibiotic Resistance, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

Ten years ago, when I wrote War Stories,' copyright lawyers were fighting over the question whether unlicensed personal, noncommercial copying, performance or display would be deemed copyright infringement. I described three strategies that lawyers for book publishers, record labels, and movie studios had deployed to try to assure that the question was answered the way they wanted it to be. First, copyright owners were labeling all unlicensed uses as "piracy" on the ground that any unlicensed use might undermine copyright owners' control. That epithet helped to obscure the difference between unlicensed uses that invaded defined statutory exclusive rights and other …

Copyright's Creative Hierarchy In The Performing Arts, Michael W. Carroll

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Copyright law grants authors certain rights of creative control over their works. This Article argues that these rights of creative control are too strong when applied to the performing arts because they fail to take account of the mutual dependence between writers and performers to fully realize the work in performance. This failure is particularly problematic in cases in which the author of a source work, such as a play or a choreographic work, imposes content-based restrictions on how a third party may render the work in performance. This Article then explores how Congress might craft a statutory license to …

The Eye Alone Is The Judge: Images And Design Patents, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Design patents are an area of intellectual property law focused entirely on the visual, unlike copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or the various sui generis protections that have occasionally been enacted for specific types of innovation. Judges and lawyers in general are highly uncomfortable with images, yet design patents force direct legal engagement with images. This short piece offers an outsider’s view of what design patent law has to say about the use of images as legal tools, why tests for design patent infringement are likely to stay unsatisfactory, and what lessons other fields of intellectual property, specifically copyright, might …

Copyright’S Creative Hierarchy In The Performing Arts, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Copyright law grants authors certain rights of creative control over their works. This Article argues that these rights of creative control are too strong when applied to the performing arts because they fail to take account of the mutual dependence between writers and performers to fully realize the work in performance. This failure is particularly problematic in cases in which the author of a source work, such as a play or a choreographic work, imposes content-based restrictions on how a third party may render the work in performance. This Article then explores how Congress might craft a statutory license to …

Privacy, Copyright, And Letters, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

The focus of this Essay is the privacy of letters – the written manifestations of thoughts, intents, and the recollections of facts directed to a person or a narrowly defined audience. The importance of this privacy is captured in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan and in the film based on the novel. The fulcrum from which the action springs is a letter that is read by someone to whom it was not addressed. The result is literally life-changing, even disastrous for a number of characters. One person dies, two people seemingly meant for each other are torn apart and …

Clash Of Cultures - Integrating Copyright And Consumer Law, Lucie Guibault, Natali Helberger

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Purpose – This article seeks to deal with the fundamental conceptual differences between consumer law and copyright law that render the application of consumer law to copyright-law related conflicts difficult. Design/methodology/approach – Following a normative approach to copyright and consumer law based on an analysis of the relevant literature and case law, the article examines in which situations consumers encounter obstacles when trying to rely on consumer law to invoke ‘‘privileges’’ granted to them under copyright law, such as the private copying exception. Findings – Research shows that most difficulties lie in the fundamental conceptual differences between consumer law and …

Duration Of Copyright In Audiovisual Works Under Us Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Calculating the duration of US copyright in audiovisual works can be a daunting task, complicated by issues of transitional law spanning the US Copyright Acts of 1909 and 1976 and the latter’s subsequent amendments. Readers with an inclination for complexity will find their tastes amply satisfied when inquiry turns to the questions of private international law that also come into play when foreign audiovisual works are at issue. Gluttons for punishment will further relish addressing the relationship of the duration of copyright in an audiovisual work to the duration of copyright in the underlying literary work on which the film …

Kernochan Center News - Fall 2012, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.

Untangling Jurisdiction And Contract Scope Issues Within Intellectual Property Licenses, Brandon Beam

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Copyright license cases pose difficult issues regarding the mixture of federal copyright law and state contract law for courts and commentators alike. Specifically, a split exists over which cases "arise under" federal copyright law. This complication is compounded by the difficulty in predicting federal preemption of state contract law.

In an effort to stabilize these complications, this comment recommends an approach of split sovereignty that would empower different systems to control the areas they are designated to regulate. In particular, the author suggests that procedural issues in copyright license cases should be clarified by (1) governing exclusive federal jurisdiction under …

The Obligatory Structure Of Copyright Law: Unbundling The Wrong Of Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Courts and scholars today understand and discuss the institution of copyright in wholly instrumental terms. Indeed, given the forms of analysis that they routinely employ, one might be forgiven for thinking that copyright is nothing more than a comprehensive government-administered scheme for encouraging the production of creative expression and is therefore quite legitimately the subject matter of public law. While this instrumental focus may have the beneficial effect of limiting copyright’s unending expansion, it also serves as a source of distraction. It directs attention away from the reality that copyright is fundamentally a creation of the law and is thus …

Appropriate Testing And Resolution: How To Determine Whether Appropriation Art Is Transformative Fair Use Or Merely In Unauthorized Derivative., Eric D. Gorman

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article addresses the copyright concerns in appropriation art today and concludes that copyright law should be amended to address the complex issues found in this area of the law. Part II provides a background on appropriation art and the different facets of copyright law, including the doctrine of fair use. Part III analyzes whether appropriation art can even be considered “fair use” under the current exceptions of copyright infringement. Part IV discusses various legal tests to determine whether appropriation art that utilizes copyrighted material can exercise the doctrine of fair use against alleged copyright infringement. It also proposes a …