In a closely watched case, the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the scanning of book contents by libraries for archival and research purposes constitutes a ‘Fair Use’ of those copyrighted materials. Ruling in Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust, No. 12-4547, 2014 U.S. App. Lexis 10803 (2d Cir. Jun. 10, […]
In a bizarre ruling that effectively eliminates the very notion of a Statute of Limitations on Copyright infringement suits, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that “Under the [Copyright] Act, each infringing act equates to a new wrong, thus triggering a new limitations period.” That logic stretch enabled the Court to find in favor of […]
The Federal Circuit Court once again revealed its lack of understanding about the intersection of copyright and tech by overturning a lower court verdict and declaring that programming language application program interfaces (APIs) are subject to copyright. These APIs are intentionally short pieces of text such as “java.lang.ref” and “js.object.name” whose only purpose is to […]
In a rare event, The DC Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the middle of April in AF Holdings v. Does 1-1058, a case centered on what has become known as the “copyright troll business model.” These are cases brought by copyright holders which attempt to join together in a single action hundreds or […]
Web publishers who publish photographs that they find on the Web must identify and obtain permission from the photographer or copyright holder or face stiff financial penalties. In the New York case, Agence France Presse v. Morel, 2011 WL 147718 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 14, 2011), photographer Daniel Morel had taken some photos of the Haitian earthquake […]