Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

God In The Machine: A New Structural Analysis Of Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Recognition of the structural role of fair use has the potential to mitigate some of the uncertainty of current fair use jurisprudence. The statutory framework for fair use both mitigates and causes uncertainty. It mitigates uncertainty by providing a consistent framework of analysis the four statutory factors. However, when judges apply the statutory factors without articulating or justifying their own assumptions, they increase uncertainty. The statutory factors mean nothing without certain a priori assumptions as to the scope of the copyright owner's rights. A more stable and predictable fair use jurisprudence would begin to emerge if those assumptions were made …

The Future Of Copyright, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (2004).

Sometimes technological change is so profound that it rocks the foundations of an entire body of law. Peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing systems--Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA, Grokster, and Freenet3--are mere symptoms of a set of technological innovations that have set in motion an ongoing process of fundamental changes in the nature of copyright law. The video tape recorder begat the Sony substantial noninfringing use defense. The digital cassette recorder begat the Audio Home Recording Act. The internet begat the Digital …

The Downhill Battle To Copyright Sonic Ideas In Bridgeport Music, Matthew S. Garnett

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note argues that the bright-line rule announced in Bridgeport Music should not apply where the disputed digital sample appropriates only the "sonic" ideas of the original work. The main thrust of this argument is that the Sixth Circuit's holding in Bridgeport Music is inapplicable where the disputed copying is a protected exercise of "fair use" reverse engineering; that is, where copying is necessary to appropriate the "sonic" ideas embodied in the sampled work.

Part II of this Note presents a brief history of digital sampling, including its application in the Hip-Hop musical genre. Part III presents a walkthrough of …

Why Intellectual Property Belongs In The First-Year Property Course, Roberta Rosenthal Kwall

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Copyright Law And Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Neda Ballard Panula

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Tasini And Its Progeny: The New Exclusive Right Or Fair Use On The Electronic Publishing Frontier?, Lateef Mtima

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Panel Ii: Public Appropriation Of Private Rights: Pursuing Internet Copyright Violators. , Michael Carlinsky, Justin Hughes, Rebecca Tushnet

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech And How Copying Serves It, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defenders of transformative uses have invoked the First Amendment to bolster claims that such uses should not be subject to the copyright owner’s permission. But this focus on transformation is critically incomplete, leaving unchallenged much of copyright’s scope, despite the large number of nontransformative copying activities that are also instances of free speech. The current debate leaves the way open for expansions of copyright that, while not targeted at dissenting viewpoints, nonetheless may have a profoundly negative effect on freedom of speech. In other words, transformation has limited our thinking about the free speech interests implicated by copying. This essay …

Even More Parodic Than The Real Thing: Parody Lawsuits Revisited, Bruce P. Keller, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

An article focusing on a copyright decision initially may appear out of place in the pages of The Trademark Reporter®. Yet Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that a parodic, transformative use of a copyrighted work, even if commercial, could qualify as a fair use, is quite significant for trademark lawyers. As a practical matter, parody cases increasingly involve copyright as well as trademark claims, so practitioners often encounter both within the same case. As a doctrinal matter, Campbell also has proved legally significant in trademark cases because the free-speech concerns underlying protection for …

The Fallacy That Fair Use And Information Should Be Provided For Free: An Analysis Of The Responses To The Dmca's Section 1201, Mauricio España

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note argues that 17 U.S.C. § 120, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is not only necessary to ensure that copyright law is able to progress and advance in the digital revolution, but more importantly, that the protection of copyrighted works will benefit the public in ways the analog world cannot. It also argues that legal commentators' fears about § 1201 are misplaced.

The Fallacy That Fair Use And Information Should Be Provided For Free: An Analysis Of The Responses To The Dmca's Section 1201, Mauricio España

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note argues that 17 U.S.C. § 120, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is not only necessary to ensure that copyright law is able to progress and advance in the digital revolution, but more importantly, that the protection of copyrighted works will benefit the public in ways the analog world cannot. It also argues that legal commentators' fears about § 1201 are misplaced.

Excuse And Justification In The Law Of Fair Use: Transaction Costs Have Always Been Only Part Of The Story, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In American copyright law, the doctrine of "fair use" has long been problematic. Every plausible litmus test that might simplify the "fair use" inquiry has proven inadequate, and copyright commentators have long sought an algorithm or heuristic to lend predictability and conceptual coherence to the doctrine. Twenty years ago, I published in this Journal an article entitled Fair Use as Market Failure, which suggested that the key to understanding the protean terms of "fair use" could best be found in the notion of market failure. That 1982 article has been often misapplied, by both courts and commentators. I am …

The E-Rated Industry: Fair Use Sheep Or Infringing Goat?, Christina Mitakis

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note explores the copyright issues presented by the litigation between companies that sanitize movies for viewing by the general public and the studios and directors involved in the creation of the edited movies. Collectively, these companies comprise what is generally referred to as the e-rated industry.' Certain companies within the e-rated industry use digital editing software to edit profanity, sex and violence from popular movies, while other companies provide software allowing viewers to edit their own DVDs. In all cases, this editing is done without the consent of the moviemakers. CleanFilms, which rents out e-rated movies, defines e-rated movies …

Copyright And The First Amendment: After The Wind Done Gone, Joseph M. Beck

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

On March 16, 2001, plaintiff SunTrust Bank filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against defendant Houghton Mifflin Company, alleging copyright and trademark infringement based on defendant's yet-to-be published novel The Wind Done Gone. On March 23, plaintiff filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction barring the book's imminent publication. The district court held a hearing on the motion for a temporary restraining order on March 29,2001, and then set down a second hearing for April 18, 2001. On April 20,2001, the district court filed a fifty-one page …

A Sample For Pay Keeps The Lawyers Away: A Proposed Solution For Artists Who Sample And Artists Who Are Sampled, Charles E. Maier

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The law of copyright has its origins in the constitu- tion of the United States, which grants congress the power "to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discov- eries. To carry out this mandate, Congress passed the Copyright Act, establishing the basic rights to be enjoyed by the copyright owner, including the right of adaptation, and the right of reproduction. ''

Sampling seems to be a clear violation of these exclusive rights. However, Congress has provided an excep- tion, the …

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph P. Liu

Michigan Law Review

This Article makes a very specific and concrete proposal: it argues that courts should adjust the scope of copyright protection to account for the passage of time by expressly considering time as a factor in fair use analysis. More specifically, this Article argues that the older a copyrighted work is, the greater the scope of fair use should be - that is, the greater the ability of others to re-use, critique, transform, and adapt the copyrighted work without permission of the copyright owner. Conversely, the newer the work, the narrower the scope of fair use. Or, even more concretely, this …

Market Failure And Intellectual Property: A Response To Professor Lunney, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Lunney's piece in this volume is interesting enough that I forgive him for misportraying my own work. In this short reply I will clarify my position, and then examine both the place of my market failure argument and the place of some of Professor Lunney's arguments within the future of Intellectual Property scholarship as a whole.

Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Michigan Law Review

In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …

Paradigm Shifts And Access Controls: An Economic Analysis Of The Anticircumvention Provisions Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Melissa A. Kern

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note addresses the broadened scope of protection granted to copyright holders under the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This broadened scope extends to copyright holders the right to control access to their works, diminishing the consumer's 'fair use" of those works that previously served as a defense to alleged copyright infringements. While access controls are supported by economists who believe they are useful in correcting market inefficiencies and excluding free riders, this Note suggests that access controls cannot correct all market inefficiencies. Furthermore, such access controls deny access and use of copyrighted material …

Excuse And Justification In The Law Of Fair Use: Commodification And Market Perspectives, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Over twenty years ago, the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. reprinted my article, "Fair Use as Market Failure" (82 Columbia Law Review 1600 (1982), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3577724. That 1982 piece suggested that an underlying pattern governs the protean forms of "fair use", and I employed the notion of market failure to reveal and explain how the pattern functioned. Since then, some misunderstandings of my argument have arisen.

I am pleased to publish in this, the Fiftieth Anniversary issue of the Journal of the Copyright Society, a clarification – and partial amendment – of my position. As …

Toward A "New Deal" For Copyright In The Information Age, Pamela Samuelson

Michigan Law Review

Jessica Litman believes the public needs a very good copyright lawyer, and if I have not mistaken her intentions, she is volunteering for the job (pp. 70-73). A century of Congressional deference to industry-negotiated compromises has produced, she argues, a copyright law that is both incomprehensible and unfair. This incomprehensibility might be tolerable if copyright law governed only commercial relations among industry participants, all of whom have copyright counsel. To the extent that copyright law applies to the conduct of ordinary persons, its incomprehensibility presents serious difficulties. Moreover, to the extent that copyright law makes illegal many ordinary activities of …

Roundtable Panel Iii: Digital Audio, Michael Carlinsky, Steven Fabrizio, Katherine Forrest, Nic Garnett

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Roundtable Panel Ii: Digital Video, Andrew Appel, Jeffrey Cunard, Martin Garbus, Edward Hernstadt

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fair Use Infrastructure For Rights Management Systems, Dan L. Burk, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper, we consider whether rights management systems can be supported by legal and institutional infrastructures that enable appropriate public access to the works secured by these technologies. We focus primarily on the design challenges posed by the fair use doctrine, which historically has played a central role in preserving such access. Throughout the paper, however, we also use the term "fair use" to refer more generally to the variety of limiting doctrines within copyright law that serve this goal. We begin in Part II by reviewing the contours of the fair use doctrine and the legal and policy …

The Uncertain Future Of Fair Use In A Global Information Marketplace, Marshall Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The author of this article forecasts an increasingly troubled future, if not the demise of the doctrine of fair use in copyright law. Legal developments, both at home and abroad, driven by technological change, and the push toward the international harmonization of legal norms, threaten the very survival of fair use. Given these realities the doctrine will, of necessity, be reconceptualized Although fair use values will always be inscribed in copyright law, these values will have their practical manifestation in decentralized form, and effectuated, in large part, through industry agreement. They will exist in conjunction with certain bright line exceptions …

Fair Use And The Digital Distribution Of Music - Recording Industry Association Of America V. Napster, Inc. (A Comparative Analysis Of A Restraint On Copyright In The United States Of America And Trinidad And Tobago), Michelle Lisa Alexander

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to undertake a critical analysis of the Napster judgment and its treatment of the doctrine of fair use, to determine whether the doctrine can retain its integrity in the internet age. It is proposed that as technology advances, U.S. policymakers are moving away from the constitutional objectives of U.S. copyright law and are equating copyright interests with property rights, to the detriment of noncommercial users of copyrighted works. Further, it is suggested that the decision in the Napster litigation is important for the evolving landscape of U.S. copyright law, as it signals the difficulty …

Copyrights And Beyond In The Digital Age, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

At one time, only works visible to the naked eye were copyrightable, but that has long since changed. Now, works capable of perception only by use of VCRs or computers, for example, enjoy the same protection as books, paintings and sculpture. In 1994, William S. Strong reported that he had "heard Chicken Littles say that the sky is falling in on copyright owners" in the digital age and predicted to the contrary. He was right; publishers' problems may have changed in degree but not in kind. For important, if not critical, internet needs to be met, providers must recoup costs.

Classroom Lecture For Copyright Law, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

The differences between direct, vicarious and contributory liability, Section 512 in related matters. Alright, now let's move on to the next question, which is criminal liability. You read some material on that. And the basic lessons that I want you to take from the material are the following. First, notice that federal copyright law does not impose criminal liability easily as ordinary laws of tangible property do. And I think that that's a good thing. Remember that guy in Les Miserables who's pursued for stealing a loaf of bread. Stealing in the sense of copying one song would not make …

Trademarks And The Movies: An Af-'Fair Use To Remember, Lauren P. Smith

Cleveland State Law Review

The Federal Trademark Dilution Act poses a serious threat for filmmakers, much more so than found under the original Lanham Act. A filmmaker can be found guilt of dilution without a finding that consumers would likely be confused by the allegedly diluting use. The mere appearance of a mark in a film would not likely violate a trademark holders rights. According dilution's much less stringent standard, non-competing uses of a mark which would "blur" its strength would violate a holder's rights. Courts have used the FTDA in ways as broad as its language allows, and it poses a very serious …

Toward A Doctrine Of Fair Use In Patent Law, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

The intellectual property laws are becoming increasingly stressed as their largely time-worn doctrines grapple with problems posed by new technology. In this Article, Dean O'Rourke argues that this pressure has become particularly acute in patent law where policymakers have expanded protection without concomitantly evaluating the impact of that move on follow-on innovation. The traditional assumption that patentees will efficiently license their inventions is breaking down as market failures are becoming endemic. Dean O'Rourke argues that to ensure that patent law achieves its constitutional goals, it shuld, like copyright law, use a fair use defense to address problems of market failure. …