Supreme Court hears arguments today regarding first sale doctrine and international purchases This morning the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega S.A., a case regarding the potential international scope of the first sale doctrine. Costco lawfully purchased authentic Omega watches abroad and imported them to the United States for sale in its stores. Omega sued for copyright infringement, arguing the watches […] Continue Reading →
Ninth Circuit: AutoCAD purchasers are licensees, so first sale doctrine does not apply to resale In a decision last week, the Ninth Circuit held the purchaser of a copy of AutoCAD software was not an owner of the copy, but instead a licensee. As a result, the purchaser did not have the protection of the first sale doctrine (codified in 17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) when attempting to resell the software […] Continue Reading →
Copyright Office issues new DMCA exemptions: iPhone jailbreaking, noncommercial use of DVD snippets Every three years, the United States Copyright Office seeks proposals for exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). As part of the DMCA, it became unlawful to circumvent access control measures copyright holders used to secure their copyrighted works. For example, it is arguably a violation of the DMCA to use a program to […] Continue Reading →
Ninth Circuit: Filing copyright application sufficient to bring suit under Section 411(a) In a decision last week, the Ninth Circuit held the filing of an application for registration with the copyright office is sufficient to meet the requirement that a copyright be "registered" before suit is brought under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a). In the first circuit court decision on the subject since the Supreme Court's Reed Elsevier […] Continue Reading →
Supreme Court: Registration requirement of 411(a) not jurisdictional for copyright claims Today the Supreme Court decided Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, a case regarding whether the registration requirement of 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) is jurisdictional or a claim processing rule. The Court held the requirement to be nonjurisdictional. The case involves a class action for copyright infringement by freelance journalists based on republication of works in […] Continue Reading →
UNIX Copyrights Owned by SCO, not Novell In the late 1960's, AT&T developed a computer operating system known as UNIX. This operating system is now widely used in both servers and workstations, and is generally characterized by a less polished (and in many ways more powerful) user interface than typical consumer products (such as Microsoft's Windows or Apple's Mac OS). The product […] Continue Reading →
Fourth Circuit: Plagiarism detection service is fair use of students’ copyrighted papers In a recent decision by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the court decided that the anti-plagiarism service provided by iParadigms at turnitin.com, did not constitute copyright infringement of high school students' papers submitted via the service. Instead, the court held the service was a fair use of the copyrighted works and therefore […] Continue Reading →
Seventh Circuit: Notice requirement to Copyright Office when registration refused not jurisdictional In a recent decision, the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court's grant of summary judgment that a plaintiff could not prevail in her copyright claim. The court first addressed whether the plaintiff complied with the necessary procedural requirements to have her claim heard. The plaintiff had filed for a copyright registration and had been rejected […] Continue Reading →
Digital Britain: The UK Government’s vision for a 21st century digital economy Last month, the UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport released Digital Britain, a report regarding the future of communications infrastructure in the UK, how to deal with challenges of a digital economy (such as copyright infringement), and containing policy recommendations regarding how to move forward. Click below for our thoughts on the report and […] Continue Reading →
Pirate Bay operators guilty of criminal infringement in Sweden; no webcast of US file sharing case In the past day, there has been two interesting bits of news in the world of cases alleging copyright infringement by way of peer-to-peer file sharing. The first is that the individuals who operate and maintain the servers that host The Pirate Bay, the world's largest bittorrent tracker, were held to have committed criminal copyright […] Continue Reading →