Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law June 28, 2011 When a work is first made available over the Internet, what is its “country of origin?”  In a previous column, “Borderless Publications, the Berne Convention, and U.S. Copyright Formalities,” I addressed this question in connection with the decision in Moberg v. Leygues, 666 [...]

Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School June 20, 2011 This past Wednesday, I attended a terrific conference at George Washington University Law School on “Can the Google Book Settlement be Fixed?”  After more than a year of silence, on March 22, 2011, Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed settlement in the [...]

Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law June 15, 2011 For the past several weeks, an active debate in the copyright world has focused on the question of whether a tattoo drawn on a person’s face is properly considered eligible for copyright protection.  The issue came up in the context of Warner Brothers’ newly released [...]

Prof. Rodney A. Smolla, President, Furman University June 2, 2011 Richard Prince is a well-known “appropriation artist.”  As the phrase suggests, Prince “appropriates” the works of others to create his own artistic works.  His efforts have been successful; his works have been shown at many museums and galleries, including a solo show at the Guggenheim [...]

Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law May 25, 2011 We’ve all seen it.  Stick a movie in the DVD player, and up pops a scary message from law enforcement: if you infringe copyright, the feds will come after you.  Indeed, this threat is so ubiquitous that it has worked its way into [...]

Prof. Rodney A. Smolla, President, Furman University May 19, 2011 For many years the First Amendment has been understood as protecting an individual’s right to engage in anonymous speech.  Anonymity is also a signature characteristic of much of the communication that takes place on the Internet.  In copyright infringement cases arising from claims that copyrighted [...]

Prof. Peter S. Menell, University of California at Berkeley School of Law Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology May 13, 2011 A new digital music era has arrived.  Amazon’s Cloud Drive web storage application introduced on March 29th, followed last week by the announcement of Google’s Music Beta storage locker system, ushers in a [...]

Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School April 27, 2011 Law professors rarely have labs the way that other scientists do.  For us, our classrooms are the places that we go to run our experiments to see what happens when a couple of unusual legal concoctions are mixed together.  It is a [...]

Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg,1 Columbia University School of Law April 20, 2011 This is the second of two columns on authors’ contracts and the U.S. copyright law.  (For the first see Part I.) In this column I will address copyright rules governing the scope of the rights that authors may grant. General presumption regarding interpretation [...]

Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law April 12, 2011 In copyright class, professors usually spend most of their time explaining the “public law” aspects of copyright – the exclusive rights that the law gives copyright holders (e.g., reproduction and public performance) and the privileges that the law gives to those who use [...]