Protecting User Rights Against Contract Override

Rightsholders often distribute digital content subject to licenses that seek to override exceptions contained in national copyright laws. Recognizing that these license terms could upset their copyright law’s balance between rightsholders and users, legislators around the world have enacted clauses that invalidate license terms inconsistent with their copyright law’s exceptions. This compilation assembles the copyright override prevention clauses adopted in 48 countries over the past 30 years. It also sets forth references to contract override prevention in documents officially presented in the World Intellectual Property Organization, as well as clauses that have been proposed in various fora in the United States

The SOPA-TPP Nexus

The controversy in the United States over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has profound implications for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The SOPA debate underscores the importance of striking the proper balance in intellectual property laws to promote creativity and innovation. It demonstrates that over-protection can stifle free expression and the effective operation of the Internet as a medium of communication and commerce not only within a jurisdiction, but also extraterritorially. Additionally, the debate reveals the ability of the Internet community to mobilize quickly to defeat policies that it believes threaten its existence. TPP negotiators should understand the SOPA experience to avoid repeating its mistakes

The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement, 9 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 227 (2009)

In its Library Project, Google is scanning millions of books from the world’s leading research libraries to include in a searchable database. This scanning has occurred without the copyright owners’ authorization, leading to the class action copyright infringement lawsuit, Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. The central legal issue in the litigation is whether copyright law’s fair use doctrine provides Google with a defense against the authors’ claims. Ultimately, the parties reached a settlement. The proposed Settlement Agreement is an extremely complex document which, if approved by the court, will govern the future of the Google Library Project. It creates a mechanism that allows Google to scan and display the full text of millions of books. In exchange, Google will pay fees to each book\u27s rightsholder. The proposed settlement has precipitated a heated public debate over competition concerns, privacy, intellectual freedom, and the rights of authors and publishers. This article traces the history of the Google Library Project and discusses in-depth the original Google Library Project, the litigation, the original Settlement Agreement, the debate concerning the approval of the Settlement Agreement, and the Amended Settlement Agreement

The Book Rights Registry in the Google Book Settlement

Copyright law poses a significant challenge to any effort to create a comprehensive digital database of published books. Approximately eighty percent of these millions of titles are still under copyright. The tremendous amount of time, transaction costs and uncertainty relating to clearing the rights to so many works is overwhelming

The SOPA-TPP Nexus

The controversy in the United States over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has profound implications for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The SOPA debate underscores the importance of striking the proper balance in intellectual property laws to promote creativity and innovation. It demonstrates that over-protection can stifle free expression and the effective operation of the Internet as a medium of communication and commerce not only within a jurisdiction, but also extraterritorially. Additionally, the debate reveals the ability of the Internet community to mobilize quickly to defeat policies that it believes threaten its existence. TPP negotiators should understand the SOPA experience to avoid repeating its mistakes

Artists Don\u27t Get No Respect: Panel on Attribution and Integrity

When I was considering the question of the moral right to attribution and how unauthorized fan creativity relates to that concept, it struck me that there are two interesting issues from a theoretical perspective. The first is: who gets the credit? When I was in law school and discovered fan fiction, the reason why I got into intellectual property was because most of these stories had a disclaimer-no copyright infringement intended, these characters aren\u27t mine, I\u27m not making any money, please don\u27t sue. And as a student, my question was – does that work? Is that good enough? I was interested in these disclaimers because copyright law does not have an explicit place in the fair use test for evaluating disclaimers as a factor favoring a defense in the way that trademark law does. I, nonetheless, concluded that, in general, fan fiction was going to be fair use. It has yet to be litigated to any particular conclusion. Although cease and desist letters do so still go out, and fans still either comply or they say no, generally there is no result. That is, I think a lot of the copyright owners are unwilling to deal with the publicity and the possibility of finding this as fair use in a litigated case

Some Cautionary Tales about Collective Licensing

Article published in the Michigan State International Law Review