Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. Unlike "fair dealing" rights that exist in most countries that were part of the British Empire in the 20th century, the fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works and turns on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount used, and the impact on the market of the original work.
The idea–expression distinction or idea–expression dichotomy is a legal doctrine in the United States that limits the scope of copyright protection by differentiating an idea from the expression or manifestation of that idea.
Jon Ormond Newman is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, 280 F.3d 934 withdrawn, re-filed at 336 F.3d 811, is a U.S. court case between a commercial photographer and a search engine company. During the case, ownership of Arriba Soft changed to Sorceron, the operator of the Internet search engine Ditto.com. The court found that US search engines may use thumbnails of images, though the issue of inline linking to full size images instead of going to the original site was not resolved.
In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work. The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in form from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. Translations, cinematic adaptations and musical arrangements are common types of derivative works.
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the "Betamax case", is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use. The Court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, such as Betamax or other VCRs, cannot be liable for contributory infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market, as it created a legal safe haven for the technology.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time limit, and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1928, are in the public domain.
Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc., 907 F. Supp. 1361, is a U.S. district court case about whether the operator of a computer bulletin board service ("BBS") and Internet access provider that allows that BBS to reach the Internet should be liable for copyright infringement committed by a subscriber of the BBS. The plaintiff Religious Technology Center ("RTC") argued that defendant Netcom was directly, contributorily, and vicariously liable for copyright infringement. Netcom moved for summary judgment, disputing RTC's claims and raising a First Amendment argument and a fair use defense. The district court of the Northern District of California concluded that RTC's claims of direct and vicarious infringement failed, but genuine issues of fact precluded summary judgment on contributory liability and fair use.
Substantial similarity, in US copyright law, is the standard used to determine whether a defendant has infringed the reproduction right of a copyright. The standard arises out of the recognition that the exclusive right to make copies of a work would be meaningless if copyright infringement were limited to making only exact and complete reproductions of a work. Many courts also use "substantial similarity" in place of "probative" or "striking similarity" to describe the level of similarity necessary to prove that copying has occurred. A number of tests have been devised by courts to determine substantial similarity. They may rely on expert or lay observation or both and may subjectively judge the feel of a work or critically analyze its elements.
NXIVM Corp. v. The Ross Institute, 364 F.3d 471, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision that held that the defendant's critical analysis of material obtained in bad faith, i.e., in violation of a non-disclosure agreement, was fair use since the secondary use was transformative as criticism and was not a potential replacement for the original on the market, regardless of how the material was obtained.
Fair dealing is a statutory exception to copyright infringement, and is also referred to as a user's right. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, it is more than a simple defence; it is an integral part of the Copyright Act of Canada, providing balance between the rights of owners and users. To qualify under the fair dealing exception, the dealing must be for a purpose enumerated in sections 29, 29.1 or 29.2 of the Copyright Act of Canada, and the dealing must be considered fair as per the criteria established by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Salinger v. Random House, Inc., 811 F.2d 90 is a United States case on the application of copyright law to unpublished works. In a case about author J. D. Salinger's unpublished letters, the Second Circuit held that the right of an author to control the way in which their work was first published took priority over the right of others to publish extracts or close paraphrases of the work under "fair use". In the case of unpublished letters, the decision was seen as favoring the individual's right to privacy over the public right to information. However, in response to concerns about the implications of this case on scholarship, Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1992 to explicitly allow for fair use in copying unpublished works, adding to 17 U.S.C. 107 the line, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."
Nutt v. National Institute Inc. was an early case in which it was found that copyright extended beyond the words of a work. The court found that "The infringement need not be a complete or exact copy. Paraphrasing or copying with evasion is an infringement, even though there may be little or no conceivable identity between the two."
Wright v. Warner Books (1991) was a case in which the widow of the author Richard Wright (1908–1960) claimed that his biographer, the poet and writer Margaret Walker (1915–1998), had infringed copyright by using content from some of Wright's unpublished letters and journals. The court took into account the recent ruling in Salinger v. Random House, Inc. (1987), which had found that a copyright owner had the right to control first publication, but found in favor of Walker after weighing all factors. The case had broad implications by allowing the use of library special collections for academic research.
Cariou v. Prince, 714 F.3d 694 is a copyright case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on the question of whether artist Richard Prince's appropriation art treatment of Patrick Cariou's photographs was copyright infringement or fair use. The Second Circuit held in 2013 that Prince's appropriation art could constitute fair use, and that a number of his works were transformative fair uses of Cariou's photographs. The Court remanded to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for reconsideration of five of Prince's works. The Supreme Court denied Cariou's petition for a writ of certiorari, and the case settled in 2014.
The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (CRCA) is a United States copyright law that attempted to abrogate sovereign immunity of states for copyright infringement. The CRCA amended 17 USC 511(a):
In general. Any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity, shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States or under any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal Court by any person, including any governmental or nongovernmental entity, for a violation of any of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner provided by sections 106 through 122, for importing copies of phonorecords in violation of section 602, or for any other violation under this title.
Monge v. Maya Magazines, Inc. 688 F.3d 1164 is a copyright lawsuit where the court determined if the publication of previously unpublished photographs in a celebrity gossip magazine constitutes fair use. Latin American celebrities singer Noelia Lorenzo and music producer Jorge Reynoso claimed that Maya Publishing Group, LLC and Maya Magazines, Inc. infringed their copyrights by publishing previously unpublished photos of their secret wedding in their celebrity gossip magazine "TVNotas".
Dr. Seuss Enters., L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc. 109 F.3d 1394 is a copyright lawsuit where the court determined if a copy of an original work’s artistic style, plot, themes, and certain key character elements qualified as fair use. Penguin Books published a book titled The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice that use the artistic style, themes and characteristics of Dr. Seuss books to tell the story of the O. J. Simpson murder case. Dr. Seuss Enterprises accuse the publisher of copyright and trademark infringement.
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith is a U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with transformative use, a component of fair use, under U.S. copyright law. At issue was the Prince Series created by Andy Warhol based on a photograph of the musician Prince by Lynn Goldsmith. It held Warhol's changes were insufficiently transformative to fall within fair use for commercial purposes, resolving an issue arising from a split between the Second and Ninth circuits among others.
New Era Publications International ApS v. Carol Publishing Group and Jonathan Caven-Atack (1990), also known as New Era II, was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the use of quotations from the works of L. Ron Hubbard in a critical biography of him, A Piece of Blue Sky, written by former Scientologist and academic Jon Atack, was legal fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act, allowing the publication to go forwards after it had been blocked by District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Louis L. Stanton.
