The practices associated with intellectual property indemnity can be traced in part to Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. At the dawn of the computer age, practitioners searched for legal models that they could use for transactions in intangible rights and products such as computer software. Although computer software did not fit easily into [...]

Before Flash ruled the media-streaming world, and when iTunes simply did not exist, there was Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge (“Monkey Island”). Aside from its highly addictive gameplay, Monkey Island had one noteworthy characteristic: a Decoder Wheel. Upon inserting the game, the software would prompt the user to align various icons on the wheel to [...]

The advent of the digital age and the wide diffusion of copyrighted works over the Internet have brought about a drastic challenge to the pre-existing rules and legal standards governing the exchange of information. This article points out one of the ways the development of these new technologies has altered the boundaries of copyright, specifically [...]

D.J. Girl Talk is one of the budding artists in the music industry today, and his instrument is a laptop. D.J. Girl Talk (hereinafter also referred to as “Girl Talk”), whose real name is Gregg Gillis, “samples,” or uses short clips, from other artists’ songs to create popular dance music. Girl Talk’s songs combine old, [...]

The dawn of peer-to-peer networks and the subsequent rise of file sharing over the Internet have proved to be a considerable threat to the revenues of the Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA”) and the international music community.  While early music downloading across peer-to-peer networks on the Internet was largely limited “to college students with [...]

History has venerated the free transfer of tangible property, and this is partly why students of copyright law can purchase their textbooks “used” at discount prices. [1] If 2L Dave buys Professor William Patry’s copyright treatise at the bookstore, Dave acquires title to the book and can freely transfer it to thrifty 1L Sara the [...]

Mainstream search engines derive their principal source of revenue from advertising. [1] Pay Per Click Advertising (hereinafter “Paid Placement”) is one of the most widely utilized advertising practices, offering content providers the opportunity to create short textual advertisements hyperlinked to their website. [2] Providers bid on keywords associated with their advertisement, [3] and when a [...]

Abstract–Guitar tablature Web sites have been the subject of recent cease-and-desist letters, forcing most to shut down. Litigation has been side-stepped with the arrival of new creative means to continue operation. The case that may have gone to court is discussed here, ranging from the appropriate legal claims of copyright infringement to the fair-use-defense arguments [...]

Seven years have passed since Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the statute which makes circumventing technological barriers to copyrighted works illegal. [1] In the meantime, the DMCA has been widely criticized, and, within the last two years, undergone a major change in interpretation by the Federal Circuit in Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. [...]

In April 2006, a Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated claims from three separate districts in a lawsuit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment for a piece of software that the corporation included on four million CDs sold in retail outlets. [1] The software, eXtended Copy Protection (XCP2), buried what is often called a “rootkit” in [...]

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) [1] are an essential component of the internet: they enable users and content providers to connect with one another online. [2] In enacting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the purpose of which was to strengthen copyright protections in the digital realm, Congress recognized both the important role played by ISPs [...]

Ever since 1954, when film critic Francois Truffaut “asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of Jean Delannoy’s,” the director has come to be seen as the auteur of the films she directs. This idea, while fine for film critics, has unnecessarily crept into the law. [...]

“The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries …” [1]   INTRODUCTION   Before the enactment of the Copyright Term Extension Act, [2] (hereinafter “CTEA”) the United States had a [...]

Recently, Google, Inc. (hereinafter “Google”), owner of the eponymous search engine, partnered with several libraries, in an effort to make their collections available for search on the Internet. This project has come under attack by The Author’s Guild (hereinafter “The Guild”). The Guild complains that scanning and uploading copyrighted works without the authors’ consent violates [...]

Researchers and engineers have long increased the speed of scientific and technological development by borrowing ideas from others. [1] The ideas contained in a work are often learned when the work is publicly sold or used. [2] Legitimate use of other’s ideas for the benefit of broader society has its underpinnings in the U.S. Constitution [...]

Starting in the early 1980s, and ending in the very beginning of the 1990s, a number of scholarly commentators proposed that biotechnology works are proper subject matter for copyright protection. [2] Typically, these commentators focused on the idea that DNA sequences may be copyrightable works of authorship. Many commentators argued that copyrighting biotechnology might be [...]

“If you can’t protect what you own–you don’t own anything.” [2] Motion Picture Association of America “To promote the progress of knowledge on the Internet, those who are building the Net itself need fair and predictable ground rules” [3] U.S. Telephone Association INTRODUCTION: The above quotes, the first from a member of the content community [...]

The United States is well known for its vigorous protection of intellectual property rights owned by American nationals as well as foreigners. Similarly, the United States expects other nations to observe intellectual property rights of American nationals. Not surprisingly, the United States makes determined effort to urge other countries, especially the countries with emerging economies, [...]

Despite the cries of some commentators that copyright law is dead (or at least that they wish it was), [1] copyright law is fully capable of responding to the challenges posed by the new technologies of the digital revolution. Copyright law initially developed in response to the invention of the printing press, [2] and has [...]

Fashion apparel is a multi-billion dollar industry that has no national boundaries. Designers, [1] retailers and consumers follow the game of international fashion. Within the last decade, consumer knowledge of specific designers has increased dramatically. Magazines and newspapers now cover the fashion industry as part of their national news coverage, focusing on the ever-changing world [...]