Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act And The First Amendment: Can They Co-Exist?, Rachel Simpson Shockley

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Folsom V. Marsh And Its Legacy, L. Ray Patterson

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Fox V. Dish Network: Sony Betamax And The Ninth Circuit's Failure To Ad-Skip To The Future, Alexander E. Porter

Akron Intellectual Property Journal

Although fair use is a fact-specific doctrine, the court equated the facts of Fox v. Dish Network to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. in order to avoid addressing both issues. This Note argues that if the Ninth Circuit had conducted a more in-depth fair use analysis, it would have found that Sony was less controlling than the court purported it to be, and that the use of Dish’s PTAT does not constitute fair use.

Part II of this Note discusses the doctrine of fair use, its application in Sony, and how the ruling of …

A Response To Mr. Y'Barbo's Reply, L. Ray Patterson

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

On Legal Protection For Electronic Texts: A Reply To Professor Patterson And Judge Birch, Douglas Y'Barbo

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Redefining The Market Failure Approach To Fair Use In An Era Of Copyright Permission Systems, Lydia Pallas Loren

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

File Caching On The Internet: Technical Infringement Or Safeguard For Efficient Network Operation?, Richard S. Vermut

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

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 …

Fair Use For Computer Programs And Other Copyrightable Works In Digital Form: The Implications Of Sony, Galoob And Sega, Pamela Samuelson

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Copyright At A Turning Point: Corporate Responses To The Changing Environment, Kenneth D. Crews

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

If Hip-Hop Were Classified And The Pentagon Papers Had Been Copyrighted: An Analysis Of Whether The Fair Use Defense In Copyright Law Is Broad Enough To Protect First Amendment Concerns, Sean Buchanan

Akron Intellectual Property Journal

This paper will show that copyright law conflicts with the First Amendment in that the fair use doctrine is insufficient to protect the fundamental rights and interests that underlie the First Amendment's protection of speech. To do this, the paper will examine three primary justifications of the First Amendment: individual liberty, the marketplace of ideas, and political participation. The paper will also analyze multiple situations, in which parties bring copyright suits and the defendants claim fair use, to determine whether the fair use doctrine protects the First Amendment. This paper will show that if one accepts either a marketplace of …

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants: How A Drastic Remodeling Of 17 U.S.C. § 108 Could Help Save Academia, Savanna Nolan

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Rants And Raves: Craigslist's Attempt To Stop Innovating Third-Party Web Developers With Copyright Law, Stephanie Marie Davies

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Defining The Press Clause: The End Of Hot News And The Attempt To Save Traditional Media, Adam Tragone

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post- Cambridge University Press, Hathitrust And Google Decisions On Fair Use, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Academic libraries face numerous stressors as they seek to meet the needs of their users through technological advances while adhering to copyright laws. This paper seeks to explore one specific proposal to balance these interests, the impact of recent decisions on its viability, and the copyright challenges that remain after these decisions.

Rectifying Fair Use After Cariou V. Prince: Reviving The Forgotten Statutory Text And Requiring That Unauthorized Copying Be Justified, Rather Than Merely “Transformative”, Daniel J. Brooks

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Law Hybridization, Clark D. Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, patent and copyright laws have been viewed as separate bodies of law with distinct utilitarian goals. The conventional wisdom holds that patent law aims to incentivize the production of inventive ideas, while copyright focuses on protecting the original expression of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. This customary divide between patent and copyright laws finds some support in the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause, and Congress, courts, and scholars have largely perpetuated it in enacting, interpreting, and analyzing copyright and patent laws over time.

In this Article, I argue that it is time to partially breach this traditional divide. …

Centering Education In The Next Great Copyright Act: A Response To Professor Jaszi, Deidre Keller

Journal Publications

Rather, as the Georgia State decisions exemplify, educators and educational institutions are treated like every other unlicensed user of copyrighted materials; they are expected to prove that each use is a fair use firmly within the confines of existing fair use jurisprudence. Jaszi further asserts that endeavoring to change the copy-right statute is a lost cause and offers, as the least bad alternative, the possibility of educators articulating their uses as transformative and, therefore, well within the recognized parameters of the fair use doctrine. This piece responds to Professor Jaszi’s article. Part II briefly analyzes the Georgia State decisions out …

Intellectual Property Law Hybridization, Clark D. Asay

University of Colorado Law Review

Traditionally, patent and copyright laws have been viewed as separate bodies of law with distinct utilitarian goals. Conventional wisdom holds that patent law aims to incentivize the production of inventive ideas, while copyright focuses on protecting the original expression of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. This customary divide between copyright and patent laws finds some support in the distinction between "authors" and "inventors," as well as that between "writings" and "discoveries," in the U.S. Constitution's Intellectual Property Clause. And Congress, courts, and scholars have largely perpetuated the divide in separately enacting, interpreting, and analyzing copyright and patent laws …

Parody And The Fair Use Defense: The Best Way To Practice Safe Sex With All Your Favorite Characters, Jessica N. Schneider

Brooklyn Law Review

The copyright fair use test balances the copyright holder’s right to exclude others from using its work against the secondary user’s First Amendment right, yet this test is often too unpredictable and favors misappropriation, even the most commercial kind. The test is weakest when used to determine the legality of sexual parodies. The sexual nature of the parody should receive statutory consideration in the balancing test because vulgar and lewd speech is often deemed “low value” speech, and therefore the secondary user’s First Amendment right is weaker compared to the copyright owner’s right to exclude. Courts already consider the sexual …

Abercrombie 2.0 - Can We Get There From Here? The Thoughts On 'Suggestive Fair Use', Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

Professor Linford, unlike Caesar’s Antony, seeks not only to bury Abercrombie, but to praise it, at least in part. Using linguistic evidence, both historical and experimental, he would relocate a bobbled boundary—from the descriptive–suggestive transition to the suggestive–arbitrary transition—and thereby establish a reformed template for sorting word marks according to their source-signifying strength. The basic difference between acquired and inherent distinctiveness not only remains in Linford’s account, however; it draws new strength from insights about semantic change. Behold, Abercrombie 2.0! His recent article, which is both provocative and engaging, continues the reconstructive work Linford began in his critique of …

Fairer Uses, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

A response to Professor Joseph Liu’s paper on Fair Use, Notice Failure, and the Limits of Copyright as Property, this essay challenges Professor Liu to go even farther in his analysis and protection of the everyday audience of copyright works. In describing and analyzing what I term “fairer uses” on the basis of qualitative data from interviews of artists and authors who make and rely on copyrighted works for their own creativity and professional well-being, I support Professor Liu’s advocacy for maintaining “fuzzy boundaries” of fair use. Based on evidence from grounded practice of professional creators, their expansive application …

Explicitly Explicit: The Rogers Test And The Ninth Circuit, Daniel Jacob Wright

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Unauthorized Digital Sampling In The Changing Music Landscape, Ryan Lloyd

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

The Player, The Video Game, And The Tattoo Artist: Who Has The Most Skin In The Game?, Jennifer L. Commander

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of The Fair Use Doctrine On Text-Book Publishing And Copying; Part Ii, Roger Billings

Akron Law Review

Although not expressly authorized by law, it has, through custom, become regarded as a fair use for scholars to make handwritten copies of copyrighted materials needed for research. The basis for allowing hand-copying is that it is such a slow, tedious method of reproduction that scholars usually choose to purchase the complete work rather than to hand-copy excerpts from it. Consequently, hand-copying does not significantly reduce publishers' sales. However, this reasoning obviously cannot be applied to photocopying. As photocopying, a fast and convenient process, becomes cheaper than buying the book, when a professor desires to make a complete volume for …

Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Lucrative Fandom: Recognizing The Economic Power Of Fanworks And Reimagining Fair Use In Copyright, Stacey M. Lantagne

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Fan culture, in the form of fan-created works like fanfiction, fanart, and fanvids, is often associated with the Internet. However, fandom has existed for as long as stories have been told. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories inspired a passionate fandom long before the age of the Internet. Despite their persistence, fanworks have long existed in a gray area of copyright law. Determining if any given fanwork is infringing requires a fair use analysis. Although these analyses pay lip service to a requirement of aesthetic neutrality, they tend to become bogged down by unarticulated artistic judgments that hinge on …

Transforming “Transformative Use”: The Growing Misinterpretation Of The Fair Use Doctrine, Caile Morris

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Starting in late 2012, and continuing into late 2013, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York wreaked havoc on the traditional interpretation of the copyright infringement defense known as “fair use.” Two cases stemming from the advent of the Google Books Project are Author’s Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust and Author’s Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. These cases adopted a controversial interpretation of the fair use defense, codified in 17 U.S.C. § 107, when each case determined that the mass digitization of thousands of books constituted fair use merely because the digitization was what is known …

The Constitutionality Of Design Patents, Ralph D. Clifford, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Design patents have been part of American law since 1842. In that time, only just over 600,000 design patents have been issued, with more than half of these being granted in the last twenty years. This quantity is dramatically fewer than the number of utility patents issued which is rapidly approaching 9,000,000 issued patents. Possibly because of the low usage of design patents over time, no case law and little literature address the constitutional issues raised by them. This article intends to overcome that shortcoming. Two constitutional aspects of design patents will be examined.

First, congressional authority to adopt the …

Code Of Best Practices In Fair Use For The Visual Arts, College Art Association, Patricia Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The mission of the College Art Association (CAA) is to promote the visual arts and their understanding through advocacy, intellectual engagement, and a commitment to the diversity of practices and practitioners. CAA contributes to the visual arts profession as a whole through scholarly publications, advocacy, exchange of research and new work, and the development of standards and guidelines that reflect the best practices of the field. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is based on a consensus of professionals in the visual arts who use copyrighted images, texts, and other materials in their creative …