Many copyright observers, me included, believe the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Google v. Oracle was deeply flawed because rather than answer the copyrightability question presented (i.e. whether APIs are properly a subject of protection), the Court instead deconstructed that analysis and spread it across the four factors of the fair use test. As a result of that decision, copyright ...

On July 23, the District Court for the District of Columbia denied publisher Valancourt’s claims that the requirement to provide deposit copies of U.S. published works to the Library of Congress constitutes an unlawful taking under the Fifth Amendment and/or an infringement of speech under the First Amendment. Although many legal experts are likely to agree with the outcome, some ...

Recently, the New York and Maryland state legislatures passed nearly identical eBook licensing bills (and Rhode Island had a sister bill in the works) responding to complaints of inequity by various library associations. Couched in the rhetoric of seeking “reasonable terms” on behalf of readers, and claiming to be neither anti-publisher nor anti-author, what the libraries have in fact advocated ...

“Congress, however, barely considered the availability of state remedies for patent infringement and hence whether the States’ conduct might have amounted to a constitutional violation under the Fourteenth Amendment. It did hear a limited amount of testimony to the effect that the remedies available in some States were uncertain. The primary point made by these witnesses, however, was not that ...

In this episode, I talk to art and commercial photographer Eric O’Connell, who is also an associate professor of practice at Northern Arizona University. We talk about his work, about photography in general, his students, and of course copyright. O’Connell’s photo recently won Off the Clock 2021 Best in Show from American Photographic Artists (APA). Read interview here. Visit Eric ...

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