Quasi-property

Last updated

Quasi-property is a legal concept, in which some rights similar to ownership may accrue to a party who does an act which benefits society as a whole. Black's Law Dictionary defines "quasi" as being "almost" or "resembling" - but not actually the same as the suffix item. [1]

Contents

Property Law gives the owner of real property or personal property a "bundle of rights" for beneficial use, such as the right to sell the property or right to lifetime use of the property. [ citation needed ]

Examples

A notable and early occurrence of quasi-property being found by a court under American law was the case of International News Service v. Associated Press. The Associated Press sued International News Service for taking the substance of AP news stories, rewriting the articles, and publishing the stories in its own member newspapers. This activity did not violate copyright law because the original AP articles were not copyrighted, and also because the subsequent INS articles copied only the facts— using different language to report the story.

Nonetheless, the Court recognized an interest in the news distributor of information they had researched and gathered. A traditional property right would have granted the AP a right to exclude others from the content of their news stories good for all time and against everyone. The court described this new right as quasi-property because it only granted them the power to exclude their competitors for a limited amount of time from the substance of their articles. The general public had free rein to distribute the subject matter of the news without restriction. Creation of the new right was justified as protecting the AP from the "unfair competition" of a party who was reproducing the information and attempting to profit by distributing it faster than the creator. [2]

Another prominent example of quasi-property under US law is the continuing ownership of a person's right to publicity even after death. [ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.

Intellectual property Ownership of ideas and processes

Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The most well-known types are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in the majority of the world's legal systems.

Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual property. Property can be exchanged through contract law, and if property is violated, one could sue under tort law to protect it.

In the copyright law of the United States, a work made for hire is a work subject to copyright that is created by an employee as part of their job, or some limited types of works for which all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation. Work for hire is a statutorily defined term, so a work for hire is not created merely because parties to an agreement state that the work is a work for hire. It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally recognized author of that work. According to copyright law in the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is "made for hire", the employer—not the employee—is considered the legal author. In some countries, this is known as corporate authorship. The entity serving as an employer may be a corporation or other legal entity, an organization, or an individual.

The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their national law. The main copyright directives are the Copyright Term Directive, the Information Society Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Copyright in the Union is furthermore dependent on international conventions to which the European Union is a member.

Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82, was a copyright case about the Russian language weekly Russian Kurier in New York City that had copied and published various materials from Russian newspapers and news agency reports of Itar-TASS. The case was ultimately decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision was widely commented upon and the case is considered a landmark case because the court defined rules applicable in the U.S. on the extent to which the copyright laws of the country of origin or those of the U.S. apply in international disputes over copyright. The court held that to determine whether a claimant actually held the copyright on a work, the laws of the country of origin usually applied, but that to decide whether a copyright infringement had occurred and for possible remedies, the laws of the country where the infringement was claimed applied.

The first-sale doctrine is an American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works. In trademark law, this same doctrine enables reselling of trademarked products after the trademark holder puts the products on the market. In the case of patented products, the doctrine allows resale of patented products without any control from the patent holder. The first sale doctrine does not apply to patented processes, which are instead governed by the patent exhaustion doctrine.

A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source code and object code forms, unless that software was developed by the United States Government, in which case it cannot be copyrighted. Authors of copyrighted software can donate their software to the public domain, in which case it is also not covered by copyright and, as a result, cannot be licensed.

The SCO–Linux disputes were a series of legal and public disputes between the software company SCO Group (SCO) and various Linux vendors and users. The SCO Group alleged that its license agreements with IBM meant that source code IBM wrote and donated to be incorporated into Linux was added in violation of SCO's contractual rights. Members of the Linux community disagreed with SCO's claims; IBM, Novell and Red Hat filed claims against SCO.

International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918), also known as INS v. AP or simply the INS case, is a 1918 decision of the United States Supreme Court that enunciated the misappropriation doctrine of federal intellectual property common law—that a "quasi-property right" may be created against others by one's investment of effort and money in an intangible thing, such as information or a design. The doctrine is highly controversial and criticized by many legal scholars, but it has its supporters.

A copyright is the legal protection extended to the owner of the rights in an original work. Original work refers to every production in the literary, scientific, and artistic domains. The Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) is the leading agency responsible for handling the registration and conflict resolution of intellectual property rights and to enforce the copyright laws. IPOPHL was created by virtue of Republic Act No. 8293 or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines which took effect on January 1, 1998, under the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos.

Fashion Originators' Guild of America v. FTC, 312 U.S. 457 (1941), is a 1941 decision of the United States Supreme Court sustaining an order of the Federal Trade Commission against a boycott agreement among manufacturers of "high-fashion" dresses. The purpose of the boycott was to suppress "style piracy". The FTC found the Fashion Guild in violation of § 5 of the FTC Act, because the challenged conduct was a per se violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act.

Copyright Act of 1976 United States law

The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, codified the doctrine of "fair use", and for most new copyrights adopted a unitary term based on the date of the author's death rather than the prior scheme of fixed initial and renewal terms. It became Public Law number 94-553 on October 19, 1976 and went into effect on January 1, 1978.

Iran is a member of the WIPO since 2001 and has acceded to several WIPO intellectual property treaties. Iran joined the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1959. In December 2003 Iran became a party to the Madrid Agreement and the Madrid Protocol for the International Registration of Marks. In 2005 Iran joined the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration, which ensures the protection of geographical names associated with products. As at February 2008 Iran had yet to accede to The Hague Agreement for the Protection of Industrial Designs.

All Headline News

All Headline News (AHN) was a United States-based news agency or wire service. It was founded in 2000 by W. Jeffrey Brown as an internet news search engine. It had grown to become a major worldwide online news wire service, providing news and other content, to websites, digital signage, and other publishers who pay a fee for the service.

National Basketball Association v. Motorola, 105 F.3d 841 is a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit case in which the National Basketball Association (NBA) purported that Motorola and STATS infringed the NBA's copyright on the broadcast of games and misappropriated the data presented on the SportsTrax pager.

Authorship and ownership in copyright law in Canada is an important and complex topic which lies at the nexus between Canada's Copyright Act, an important body of case law, and a number of compelling policy motives. Analysis of Authorship and ownership of copyrightable works in Canada can proceed by examination of the rules determining the initial allocation of copyrights, rules governing subsequent changes in ownership, and finally rules governing complex works such as compilations.

<i>Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc.</i>

Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc. was a district court case in which the Associated Press (AP) brought suit against Meltwater Group in U.S. (Meltwater) for clipping and sharing news items under copyright infringement and "hot news" misappropriation under New York common law. In a cross-motion for summary judgement, Meltwater argued they were not infringing under the requirements of fair use. Meltwater claimed that their service was transformative and therefore non-infringing on copyright. The court held that Meltwater's copying was not protected under the fair use doctrine and it was infringing on AP's copyright.

The misappropriation doctrine is a U.S. legal theory conferring a "quasi-property right" on a person who invests "labor, skill, and money" to create an intangible asset. The right operates against another person "endeavoring to reap where it has not sown" by "misappropriating" the value of the asset. The quoted language and the legal principle come from the decision of the United States Supreme Court in International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918), also known as INS v. AP or simply the INS case.

Real property Legal term; property consisting of land and the buildings on it

In English common law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is land which is the property of some person and all structures integrated with or affixed to the land, including crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, and roads, among other things. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes. Personal property, or personalty, was, and continues to be, all property that is not real property.

References

  1. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Pocket ed. 2001 pg. 576).
  2. "FindLaw's United States Supreme Court case and opinions".

See also