Misreading Campbell: Lessons from Warhol

In Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) v. Goldsmith, the Supreme Court is set to revisit its most salient fair use precedent that introduced the idea of a transformative use. Purporting to rely on the Court’s adoption of transformative use as a way of understanding the fair use doctrine in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., many lower courts, including the district court below, have effectively substituted an amorphous transformativeness inquiry for the full statutory framework and factors that Congress and Campbell prescribe. At the oral argument in AWF, the Justices focused on how the transformativeness of a work might be considered as part of the fair use doctrine and rendered compatible with copyright’s right to prepare derivative works. In this Essay, we argue that the answers to these questions lay in Campbell’s logic and careful analysis, where Justice Souter methodically and meticulously incorporated the idea of transformativeness into a rich understanding of the first fair use factor and the overall four-factor framework as a whole. As we show, Campbell paid special attention to concerns with the workability of this idea and its integration with the copyright scheme developed by Congress in the Copyright Act of 1976. The Court in AWF would benefit from a close reading of Campbell, which presciently foreshadowed and thoughtfully addressed the very questions before it today

Proving Copying

Proof that a defendant actually copied from a copyrighted work is a critical part of a claim for copyright infringement. Indeed, absent such copying, there is no infringement. The most common method of proving copying involves the use of circumstantial evidence, consisting of proof that a defendant had “access” to the protected work, and a showing of “similarities” between the copy and the protected work. In inferring copying from the combination of such evidence, courts have for many decades developed a framework known as the “inverse ratio rule,” which allows them to modulate the level of proof needed on access based on the level of similarity, and vice-versa. While analytically sound, the inverse ratio rule has proven to be a persistent source of confusion among some courts, most prominently the Ninth Circuit, causing some to misapprehend the very nature of the inquiry into copying as well as the manner in which circumstantial evidence operates. This Article explains how the inverse ratio rule emanates from crucial insights about the manner in which circumstantial evidence operates, wherein multiple inferences are combined to enhance the probative value of evidence that is inconclusive in isolation. This flexible formula builds on the notion of a combined narrative that is a hallmark of all circumstantial evidence. The Article unpacks the theoretical and normative logic behind the inverse ratio rule to show how it is essential to circumstantial proof of copying, reveals how purported rejections of the doctrine by courts have been driven by a basic misunderstanding of the manner in which circumstantial inferences interact, and concludes by drawing broader insights about the interplay of copyright and evidence law

Misreading \u3cem\u3eCampbell\u3c/em\u3e: Lessons for \u3cem\u3eWarhol\u3c/em\u3e

In Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) v. Goldsmith, the Supreme Court is set to revisit its most salient fair use precedent that introduced the idea of a “transformative use.” Purporting to rely on the Court’s adoption of “transformative use” as a way of understanding the fair use doctrine in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., many lower courts, including the district court below, have effectively substituted an amorphous “transformativeness” inquiry for the full statutory framework and factors that Congress and Campbell prescribe. At the oral argument in AWF, the Justices focused on how the transformativeness of a work might be considered as part of the fair use doctrine and rendered compatible with copyright’s right to prepare derivative works. In this Essay, we argue that the answers to these questions lay in Campbell’s logic and careful analysis, where Justice Souter methodically and meticulously incorporated the idea of transformativeness into a rich understanding of the first fair use factor and the overall four-factor framework as a whole. As we show, Campbell paid special attention to concerns with the workability of this idea and its integration with the copyright scheme developed by Congress in the Copyright Act of 1976. The Court in AWF would benefit from a close reading of Campbell, which presciently foreshadowed and thoughtfully addressed the very questions before it today

The Use of Technical Experts in Software Copyright Cases: Rectifying the Ninth Circuit’s “Nutty” Rule

Courts have long been skeptical about the use of expert witnesses in copyright cases. More than four decades ago, and before Congress extended copyright law to protect computer software, the Ninth Circuit in Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp. ruled that expert testimony was inadmissible to determine whether Mayor McCheese and the merry band of McDonald’s characters infringed copyright protection for Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo and the other imaginative H.R. Pufnstuf costumed characters. Since the emergence of software copyright infringement cases in the 1980s, substantially all software copyright cases have permitted expert witnesses to aid juries in understanding software code. As the Second Circuit recognized in Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., the ordinary observer standard “may well have served its purpose when the material under scrutiny was limited to art forms readily comprehensible and generally familiar to the average lay person,” but as to computer programs, district courts must have “discretion … to decide to what extent, if any, expert opinion, regarding the highly technical nature of computer programs, is warranted in a given case.” In a shocking departure from the decisions of every other circuit that has confronted software copyright infringement litigation, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed and applied the bar on expert testimony originating in Krofft Television Productions to all copyright disputes, including those involving highly technical computer software code. The court in Antonick v. Electronic Arts, Inc. held that lay juries must decipher and analyze software code – distinct hexadecimal assembly code languages for different processors – without the assistance of expert witnesses, a rule that the authoring judge characterized at the oral argument as “nutty.” The Ninth Circuit’s rule overlooks the key distinction between the use of technical experts to analyze substantial similarity as opposed to enabling lay judges and jurors to perceive the underlying works. Just as it would be absurd to ask a lay jury with no familiarity with Kanji characters to assess whether a translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone into Japanese infringed the English original without the aid of a bilingual translator, it makes no sense to ask a non-technical jury to compare computer source codes written in different assembly languages to determine substantial similarity without expert assistance. We contend, consistent with the views of every court outside of the Ninth Circuit that has addressed the issue, that courts should permit the use of technical experts to enable lay judges and juries to perceive the meaning of computer languages and computer code

The Use of Technical Experts in Software Copyright Cases: Rectifying the Ninth Circuit’s “Nutty” Rule

Courts have long been skeptical about the use of expert witnesses in copyright cases. More than four decades ago, and before Congress extended copyright law to protect computer software, the Ninth Circuit in Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp. ruled that expert testimony was inadmissible to determine whether Mayor McCheese and the merry band of McDonald’s characters infringed copyright protection for Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo and the other imaginative H.R. Pufnstuf costumed characters. Since the emergence of software copyright infringement cases in the 1980s, substantially all software copyright cases have permitted expert witnesses to aid juries in understanding software code. As the Second Circuit recognized in Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., the ordinary observer standard “may well have served its purpose when the material under scrutiny was limited to art forms readily comprehensible and generally familiar to the average lay person,” but as to computer programs, district courts must have “discretion … to decide to what extent, if any, expert opinion, regarding the highly technical nature of computer programs, is warranted in a given case.” In a shocking departure from the decisions of every other circuit that has confronted software copyright infringement litigation, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed and applied the bar on expert testimony originating in Krofft Television Productions to all copyright disputes, including those involving highly technical computer software code. The court in Antonick v. Electronic Arts, Inc. held that lay juries must decipher and analyze software code – distinct hexadecimal assembly code languages for different processors – without the assistance of expert witnesses, a rule that the authoring judge characterized at the oral argument as “nutty.” The Ninth Circuit’s rule overlooks the key distinction between the use of technical experts to analyze substantial similarity as opposed to enabling lay judges and jurors to perceive the underlying works. Just as it would be absurd to ask a lay jury with no familiarity with Kanji characters to assess whether a translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone into Japanese infringed the English original without the aid of a bilingual translator, it makes no sense to ask a non-technical jury to compare computer source codes written in different assembly languages to determine substantial similarity without expert assistance. We contend, consistent with the views of every court outside of the Ninth Circuit that has addressed the issue, that courts should permit the use of technical experts to enable lay judges and juries to perceive the meaning of computer languages and computer code

Proving Copying

Proof that a defendant actually copied from a copyrighted work is a critical part of a claim for copyright infringement. Indeed, absent such copying, there is no infringement. The most common method of proving copying involves the use of circumstantial evidence, consisting of proof that a defendant had “access” to the protected work, and a showing of “similarities” between the copy and the protected work. In inferring copying from the combination of such evidence, courts have for many decades developed a framework known as the “inverse ratio rule,” which allows them to modulate the level of proof needed on access based on the level of similarity, and vice-versa. While analytically sound, the inverse ratio rule has proven to be a persistent source of confusion among some courts, most prominently the Ninth Circuit, causing some to misapprehend the very nature of the inquiry into copying as well as the manner in which circumstantial evidence operates. This Article explains how the inverse ratio rule emanates from crucial insights about the manner in which circumstantial evidence operates, wherein multiple inferences are combined to enhance the probative value of evidence that is inconclusive in isolation. This flexible formula builds on the notion of a combined narrative that is a hallmark of all circumstantial evidence. The Article unpacks the theoretical and normative logic behind the inverse ratio rule to show how it is essential to circumstantial proof of copying, reveals how purported rejections of the doctrine by courts have been driven by a basic misunderstanding of the manner in which circumstantial inferences interact, and concludes by drawing broader insights about the interplay of copyright and evidence law

Restatements of Statutory Law: The Curious Case of the Restatement of Copyright

For nearly a century, the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law have played an important role in the American legal system. And in all of this time, they refrained from restating areas of law dominated by a uniform statute despite the proliferation and growing importance of such statutes, especially at the federal level. This omission was deliberate and in recognition of the fundamentally different nature of the judicial role and of lawmaking in areas governed by detailed statutes compared to areas governed by the common law. Then in 2015, without much deliberation, the ALI embarked on the task of restating U.S. copyright law, an area dominated by a detailed federal statute. In so doing, the ALI ignored not just calls to revisit the form and method of its traditional Restatements projects but also the extensive history of the deep mismatch between the Restatements and statutory domains that has informed the working of the enterprise over the course of the last century. This Article explores the analytical and historical foundations of that mismatch and shows how the Restatement of Copyright reinforces the need to tailor a methodological template and perspective that is sensitive to the nature of statutory interpretation. It explains why perfunctory extension of the common law Restatement model to copyright law produces incoherent, misleading, and seemingly biased results that risk undermining the legitimacy of the eventual product. Finally, the Article explains how the mismatch between the two is capable of being remedied by a series of modest – yet significant – changes, which could allow the project to serve as a template for future statutory Restatements. These include: emphasizing the centrality of the statutory text and relevant interpretive sources, adopting crucial perspectival differences between incremental lawmaking and statutory interpretation and highlighting the unique legislative process through which the statute was developed

Comments on Preliminary Draft 9

We are writing to offer our views on Preliminary Draft No. 9 (“PD9”) and express our deep and persistent concern about the direction and methodology that the Project continues to take, which we have sought to address and remedy at multiple points over the last several years. The elements of PD9 that we describe below are, in our view, particularly striking illustrations of the problems that we have previously identified. The gravity and salience of PD9’s problems are borne out in the comments of Judge Pierre Leval, who describes elements of the draft as requiring “a substantial editing and rewriting.” Failure to undertake those fundamental revisions will perpetuate an erroneous view of the current law, with “profound consequences.” Pierre N. Leval, Comments on PD9, at 4-5 (“Leval Comments on PD9”). Judge Leval limits his comments to the fair use provisions in PD9; we note that the same concerns arise in an additional area: PD9’s treatment of the derivative works right. Judge McKeown has also highlighted significant problems in both these areas, stating, inter alia, that “the fair use section offers a position that is flatly at odds with the Supreme Court’s teaching that factor one requires justification.” M. Margaret McKeown, Comments on PD9, at 1. We elaborate on our concerns more fully below

Restatements of Statutory Law: The Curious Case of the Restatement of Copyright

For nearly a century, the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law have played an important role in the American legal system. And in all of this time, they refrained from restating areas of law dominated by a uniform statute despite the proliferation and growing importance of such statutes, especially at the federal level. This omission was deliberate and in recognition of the fundamentally different nature of the judicial role and of lawmaking in areas governed by detailed statutes compared to areas governed by the common law. Then in 2015, without much deliberation, the ALI embarked on the task of restating U.S. copyright law, an area dominated by a detailed federal statute. In so doing, the ALI ignored not just calls to revisit the form and method of its traditional Restatements projects but also the extensive history of the deep mismatch between the Restatements and statutory domains that has informed the working of the enterprise over the course of the last century. This Article explores the analytical and historical foundations of that mismatch and shows how the Restatement of Copyright reinforces the need to tailor a methodological template and perspective that is sensitive to the nature of statutory interpretation. It explains why perfunctory extension of the common law Restatement model to copyright law produces incoherent, misleading, and seemingly biased results that risk undermining the legitimacy of the eventual product. Finally, the Article explains how the mismatch between the two is capable of being remedied by a series of modest—yet significant—changes, which could allow the project to serve as a template for future statutory Restatements. These include: emphasizing the centrality of the statutory text and relevant interpretive sources, adopting crucial perspectival differences between incremental lawmaking and statutory interpretation, and highlighting the unique legislative process through which the statute was developed

Enterotoxin production, DNA repair and alkaline phosphatase of Vibrio cholerae before and after animal passage

Summary: Three strains of Vibrio cholerae differing in biotype, serotype and/or toxinogenicity were studied. The capability for dark repair of DNA and stability of alkaline phosphatase decreased concomitantly with toxinogenicity on laboratory passage of highly enterotoxinogenic strain 569B. These properties could be restored by passaging strain 569B once through a guinea-pig