Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. The U.S. "fair use doctrine" is generally broader than the "fair dealing" rights known in most countries that inherited English Common Law. The fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works. In the U.S.,fair use right/exception is based on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use,the amount used,and the impact on the market of the original work.
Eldred v. Ashcroft,537 U.S. 186 (2003),was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The practical result of this was to prevent a number of works from entering the public domain in 1998 and following years,as would have occurred under the Copyright Act of 1976. Materials which the plaintiffs had worked with and were ready to republish were now unavailable due to copyright restrictions.
Criticism of copyright,or anti-copyright sentiment,is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical,economical,or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations,the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system,though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself.
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context,"originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author",rather than "never having occurred or existed before".
Baker v. Selden,101 U.S. 99 (1879),was a leading Supreme Court of the United States copyright case cited to explain the idea-expression dichotomy.
Golan v. Holder,565 U.S. 302 (2012),was a US Supreme Court case that dealt with copyright and the public domain. It held that the "limited time" language of the United States Constitution's Copyright Clause does not preclude the extension of copyright protections to works previously in the public domain.
Intellectual Reserve,Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry,Inc.,75 F. Supp. 2d 1290,was a United States district court decision on the subject of deep linking and contributory infringement of copyright.
Feist Publications,Inc.,v. Rural Telephone Service Co.,499 U.S. 340 (1991),was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed,Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own,after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.
Lewis Galoob Toys,Inc. v. Nintendo of America,Inc. is a 1992 legal case where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that there was no copyright infringement made by the Game Genie,a video game accessory that could alter the output of games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The court determined that Galoob's Game Genie did not violate Nintendo's exclusive right to make derivative works of their games,because the Game Genie did not create a new permanent work. The court also found that the alterations produced by the Game Genie qualified as non-commercial fair use,and none of the alterations were supplanting demand for Nintendo's games.
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios,Inc.,464 U.S. 417 (1984),also known as the "Betamax case",is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement,but can instead be defended as fair use. The court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices,such as Betamax or other VCRs,cannot be liable for contributory infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market,as it created a legal safe harbor for the technology.
Limitations and exceptions to copyright are provisions,in local copyright law or the Berne Convention,which allow for copyrighted works to be used without a license from the copyright owner.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture,copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors:to make and sell copies of their works,to create derivative works,and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States,works published before January 1,1929,are in the public domain.
Authors Guild v. Google 804 F.3d 202 was a copyright case heard in federal court for the Southern District of New York,and then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals between 2005 and 2015. It concerned fair use in copyright law and the transformation of printed copyrighted books into an online searchable database through scanning and digitization. It centered on the legality of the Google Book Search Library Partner project that had been launched in 2003.
Reed Elsevier,Inc. v. Muchnick,559 U.S. 154 (2010),was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving copyright law. The Court held that failure to register a copyright under Section 411 (a) of the United States Copyright Act does not limit a Federal Court's jurisdiction over claims of infringement regarding unregistered works.
Capitol Records,LLC v. ReDigi Inc.,934 F. Supp. 2d 640,is a case from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concerning copyright infringement of digital music. In ReDigi,record label Capitol Records claimed copyright infringement against ReDigi,a service that allows resale of digital music tracks originally purchased from the iTunes Store. Capitol Records' motion for a preliminary injunction against ReDigi was denied,and oral arguments were given on October 5,2012.
Robert J. Glushko is an adjunct professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Information. He has written a number of books including Document Engineering (2005) and The Discipline of Organizing (2013).
Peter Jaszi is a widely known expert on copyright law and author,with Patricia Aufderheide,of Reclaiming Fair Use (2012),which examines the state of fair use and the importance to scholarship,art,and free expression of strengthening the doctrine.
Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc.,975 F.2d 832,is a U.S. legal case in which Atari Games engaged in copyright infringement by copying Nintendo's lock-out system,the 10NES. The 10NES was designed to prevent Nintendo's video game console,the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES),from playing unauthorized game cartridges. Atari,after unsuccessful attempts to reverse engineer the lock-out system,obtained an unauthorized copy of the source code from the United States Copyright Office and used it to create its 10NES replica,the Rabbit. Atari then sued Nintendo for unfair competition and copyright misuse,and Nintendo responded that Atari had engaged in unfair competition,copyright infringement,and patent infringement.
Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress Int'l,Inc.,293 F.3d 791,was a 2002 en banc 9-6 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,about the scope of copyright protection for building codes and by implication other privately drafted laws adopted by states and municipal governments. A three-fifths majority of the court's fifteen judges held that copyright protection no longer applied to model codes once they were enacted into law.
Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy,advertising,intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business,and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.
