Highest Form of Flattery - Application of the Fair Use Defense against Copyright Claims for Unauthorized Appropriation of Litigation Documents, The

Abstract

Part II of the Article examines which types of legal works are entitled to the limited-time monopoly provided by copyright protection. Reviewing both the purpose of the memorandum of law and the complaint, as well as the process of drafting those documents, it becomes clear that not all such documents are the formulaic, fill-in-the-blanks works that some people may imagine. Indeed, many contain some portions which entail both original effort and creative judgment. For those documents in which the idea behind the original, creative expression may be expressed in a myriad of other ways, protection is proper. Portions of many memoranda of law satisfy this creativity requirement; even portions of some complaints will satisfy this requirement