Category Archives: Copyrights

A district court in Georgia recently issued an opinion that, if upheld, may allow academic institutions and others to share portions of digital documents online and avoid liability under U.S. copyright law.

In Cambridge University Press v. Becker, the U.S. District Court for the District of Georgia considered a case where Georgia State University (GSU) allowed its faculty to post excerpts from copyrighted books online so long as the faculty members filled out a “fair use checklist” to determine whether the posting qualified as fair use.  The plaintiffs alleged that GSU’s postings infringed plaintiffs’ copyright in 74 documents.

In its 350-page opinion,  the court sided with GSU with respect to all but five of the 74 documents.  In the decisions favoring GSU, the court generally found that the university published only small excerpts online with no intent to profit from the posting.

What amount is “small enough” to qualify as fair use?   Continue reading →

It’s not often that a court decision about copyright law expressly acknowledges that the decision will be controversial.  However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit did just that in John Wiley and Sons Inc. v. Kirtsaeng (No. 09-4896, 2nd Cir. Aug. 15, 2011).

The decision related to the “first sale” doctrine under copyright law, which permits the owner of a lawfully purchased copyrighted work to resell it without limitations imposed by the copyright holder.   Continue reading →

In an unpublished opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit recently upheld a ruling that refused to impose liability on an employer for copyright infringement by an employee. 

In Klein & Huchman Inc v. CoStar Realty Information Inc., No. 10-12201 (11th Cir. April 28, 2011), an employee of a real estate agency accessed a subscription-based database of real estate information, such as prices and form documents.  The employee accessed the database without authorization, using a password that he received from a prior employer.  The database provider sued the real estate agency, claiming copyright infringment.

The trial court ruled in favor of the real estate agency, finding that the employer could not be viacriously liable or liable for contributory copyright infringement when it was not clear that the employer enjoyed a direct, financial benefit from the infringement.

In the new ruling, designated as unpublished, the appeals court affirmed the trial court’s decision.

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumvention of technical measures that copyright holders use to to control access to their copyrightable works.  Anti-circumvention technologies may include items such as encryption and other digital rights management (DRM) measures. 

Section 1201 exempts several activities from the anti-circumvention requirement.  The statutory exemptions include the use of certain tools for encryption research, security testing, and other activities.  In addition, every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office publishes a list of additional exemptions to the anti-circumvention requirement.  This week, the Copyright office published six exemptions for 2010.  The list includes two new exemptions:

1. Noncommercial DVD sampling:  for DVDs that are protected by content scrambling systems (CSS), the ruling allows circumvention of the CSS to use a short portion of the DVD content for (i) educational purposes by college and university professors or film studies students; (ii) documentary filmmaking; and (iii) noncommercial videos. 
2. “Jailbreaking”:  circumvention for the purpose of enabling interoperability of computer programs on a wireless telephone handset.

The jailbreaking exemption has received much attention, as it may permit the use of iPhone or other handset apps that haven’t been sanctioned by the device’s supplier.  However, although the process of “jailbreaking” no longer violates copyright law, the act may void the manufacturer’s warranty on the phone. 

The Copyright Office’s 2010 list also removed some exemptions that were present in 2006.  For example, an exemption governing sound recordings whose DRM created security flaws was not renewed in 2010.  The Copyright Office also declined to renew an exemption permitting access to software and videogames that were distributed in now-obsolete formats.