UHLC Nota Bene

Nearly a decade after the surge in popularity of peer to peer sharing services Lawrence Lessig wrote Remix. Remix explored the issues surrounding the crackdown on such platforms by asking questions such as what are we willing to sacrifice to win a “war” on piracy. What if adaptation could sidestep a “war” altogether? The law is notoriously slow to adapt to new technology. But art and creator based content is growing and changing at an increasing pace. Lessig uses Remix to explore where the war on piracy is failing new and exciting art forms that he labels collateral damage. The challenge to strike a balance between protecting the artist and encourage innovation is not new. The book relates the anecdote of John Phillip Sousa (of Stars and Stripes Forever fame) lobbying Congress to stop what he called a form of piracy. The new technology of the phonograph had not yet been accounted for in the copyright law and while he was able to control the reproduction and public performances of ...

Intellectual Property (IP) has become a major revenue source for colleges and universities. Trademarks, patents, and even trade secrets and copyrights are increasingly used as a money making opportunities for institutes of higher learning. In his book, The Branding of the American Mind, Jacob Rooksby argues that developing this new revenue source creates a tension between the university’s promotion of the public good and the private rights that intellectual property is designed to protect. The first chapter explores the tension starting with the Harvard OncoMouse. A mouse that Harvard sought to patent because it was unusually susceptible to cancers, making it ideal for medical testing. The second chapter is a broad overview of IP law as a whole. The remainder of the book explores the central thesis of the book, the tension between advancing the public good and protecting intellectual property rights, through each of the main areas of intellectual property (trademarks, copyright...

The ABA's Business Law Section has recently published A Practical Guide to Software Licensing for Licensees and Licensors , 6th ed. by H. Ward Classen. This book looks at the issues that both the licensor and licensee will likely encounter during the course of software licensing negotiations. In particular, the author covers the negotiating and contract process, terminology of a license grant, types of licenses, ancillary clauses, boilerplate clauses, software development agreements, confidentially provisions, trade secret information, and escrow agreements. Security and privacy, free and open source software, dispute resolution, and best practices for contract drafting are also among the topics discussed. There are select model forms available and a glossary and technology acronyms list are among the materials in the appendices. The library now has this under call number KF3024.C6 C56 2016 on the new titles shelf located across from the reference desk.

One of the key benefits state bar associations provide their members is complimentary access to online research services. Fastcase and Casemaker are the leading service providers in the field, each with a nearly equal share of the state bar association membership market. You can see the breakdown as of 2014 at this blog post from the Duke Law Library. Texas is unique (of course!) offering its members complimentary access to both Casemaker and Fastcase . Both the Casemaker and Fastcase products are solid legal research platforms, providing excellent coverage of primary law (and some secondary sources) with good search functionality. Over the last few years, some state bar associations have chosen to move to one service after years with another. The Pennsylvania bar now offers Casemaker instead of InSite, and the Georgia bar partnered with Fastcase in 2011, choosing to no longer offer  Casemaker as a member benefit. Last week, Fastcase sued Lawriter (Casemaker’s parent company),...

Yesterday, the U.S. Copyright Office announced the launch of its new Fair Use Index . Designed to provide the public with searchable summaries of major fair use decisions, the index can be searched by jurisdiction or subject matter. For example, searching the database for 5 th Circuit decisions regarding fair use in satire or parody returns the result of Dall. Cowboys Cheerleaders, Inc. v. Scoreboard Posters, Inc., 600 F.2d 1184 (5th Cir. 1979). The index does not link to the full text of the cases, rather a case brief that explains the basic facts, issue, holding, and outcome. Though the database would be more helpful to practitioners if it linked to the full-text of the cases, it is easy to use and provides information to the public that is easy to understand. Anyone who is interested in learn the basics of how the fair use exception operates in copyright law will find it worth a look. 

Carolina Academic Press has recently published Mastering Art Law by Herbert Lazerow . Art law, as the book points out, is not a cohesive topic like Contracts or Torts but instead focuses on the legal issues faced by the art industry. The author explores the issues of freedom of expression, copyright, publicity and privacy rights, defamation trademarks, title, authenticity of the work, moral rights to a work of art, and tax matters. There is a chapter covering museum law and the author discusses issues pertaining to artifacts as well as restricting international movement of artwork. Each chapter features a "roadmap" section that summarizes what you will learn after reading the chapter and each chapter is concluded with a "checkpoints" section that summarizes the main points. There is an extensive table of cases, table  of constitutions, statutes, regulations, rulings, and treatises, and table of secondary sources. The law library currently has this title , which i...

In February of 2013, Judge Jed Rackoff of New York's Southern District dismissed an attorney's copyright infringement case against Westlaw and LexisNexis. The plaintiff alleged that the online research services improperly made use of his copyrighted briefs by uploading the briefs to their systems for use by other subscribers. Judge Rackoff granted the defendants' motion for summary judgement, ending the case, but only this week was the Memorandum & Order explaining the ruling released. You can read the opinion in its entirety here , the case is White v. West Publishing, No. 02-1340 (S.D.N.Y. July 3, 2014). The opinion finds that the defendants' use of the briefs was permissible fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 107), based on the four factors outlined in the statute section. The court found that three of the four factors weighed in favor of fair use, and the remaining factor was neutral. Here's an overview of the court's findings: ...

Superman, the Man of Steel, was born in 1938, and has been involved in copyright litigation almost as long.   Mr. Mxyzptlk himself could not have created as convoluted a history of a copyright dispute as the one that involved the rights to the Superman property.  The Superman character was the brain-child of Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster. Their idea, an alien comes to Earth and has super-powers was a new one at the time.   These two Brainiacs sold the exclusive world-wide rights to Superman to Detective Comics (“DC”) for $130.00 and took employment with DC. Superman debuted in the comic-book format in Action Comics #1. He was an instant hit. Siegel and Shuster filed their first lawsuit against DC in 1947 alleging that DC was not paying them their fair share of the profits that DC was reaping from the superhero. After trial the “official referee” found that DC had paid valuable consideration for the rights to Superman and the agreement was valid. Soon after th...

American libraries celebrated a legal victory last week in the Supreme Court’s disposition of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons .   The Court ruled that the appellant’s legal purchase of inexpensive books in Thailand and resale of the same books in the United States at a higher price, a form of arbitrage known as a parallel import , is protected   under the “first sale” doctrine : the principle that someone who purchases a single copy of a copyrighted work owns that one copy and may resell it or give it away without needing permission from the copyright holder. The libraries’ celebration may be premature.   Since 2010, the United States has been engaged in multilateral negotiations to form the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed free trade zone for Pacific Rim nations.   Among other things, the TPP proposes a new intellectual property regime that would effectively nullify the Kirtsaeng ruling by banning parallel imports and severely restricting the “...

Here's a treat for those who love Sherlock Holmes (and who doesn't?): Back on Valentine's Day, an expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous character filed suit in Illinois federal court seeking a declaratory judgment that all copyrights in the character, his sidekick Mr. Watson, and any other characters or character traits that appeared in any of the works published in the United States before January 1, 1923 have expired and enjoining the Doyle estate from intefering with the upcoming publication of a book of new and original stories based on those characters. According to an article from the Hollywood Reporter about the lawsuit , Doyle's heirs, under the aegis of a company called Conan Doyle Estate Ltd, are objecting to the new book and insisting that a license agreement be procured under threat of an infringement claim. Apparently, although the copyright to all of Doyle's works expired in the UK in 1980 (see ¶ 18 of the complaint ), the estate contends th...

As we have seen from the previous two entries in this series, copyright laws often have unintended, and at times down right strange, consequences. One of the oddest works that has been impacted by the copyright system is Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”).  Written while incarcerated for attempting to overthrow the German Weimer government, Mein Kampf is part autobiography, part political statement, and part a step-by-step plan for the Nazi party takeover of Germany and the rest of Europe. The book was published in 1925 and sales were steady, although not spectacular. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, however, the book became a bestseller (it was even given to every newly married couple and every soldier fighting at the front).  The book’s worldwide popularity increased with Hitler’s rising power, which necessitated translations from German into other languages. The first English translation, by Edgar Dugdale, was published in 1931. Interes...