The Official Code of Georgia Annotated or OCGA is the compendium of all laws in the U.S. state of Georgia. Like other U.S. state codes, its legal interpretation is subject to the United States Constitution, the United States Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the state's constitution. It is to the state what the United States Code (U.S.C.) is to the federal government.
Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms and other information resources.
LexisNexis is a corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer information. During the 1970s, LexisNexis began to make legal and journalistic documents more accessible electronically. As of 2006, the company had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records–related information.
White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company, 209 U.S. 1 (1908), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that manufacturers of music rolls for player pianos did not have to pay royalties to the composers. The ruling was based on a holding that the piano rolls were not copies of the plaintiffs' copyrighted sheet music, but were instead parts of the machine that reproduced the music.
New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), is a leading decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of copyright in the contents of a newspaper database. It held that The New York Times, in licensing back issues of the newspaper for inclusion in electronic databases such as LexisNexis, could not license the works of freelance journalists contained in the newspapers.
Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U.S. 340 (1998), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that if there is to be an award of statutory damages in a copyright infringement case, then the opposing party has the right to demand a jury trial.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down twelve per curiam opinions during its 2002 term, which began October 7, 2002 and concluded October 5, 2003.
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 infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market, as it created a legal safe haven for the technology.
Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. Stemming from the publishing of several Sega Genesis games by video game publisher Accolade, which had disassembled Genesis software in order to publish games without being licensed by Sega, the case involved several overlapping issues, including the scope of copyright, permissible uses for trademarks, and the scope of the fair use doctrine for computer code.
Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. was a case in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington regarding the applicability of the first-sale doctrine to software sold under the terms of so-called "shrinkwrap licensing." The court held that when the transfer of software to the purchaser materially resembled a sale it was, in fact, a "sale with restrictions on use" giving rise to a right to resell the copy under the first-sale doctrine. As such, Autodesk could not pursue an action for copyright infringement against Vernor, who sought to resell used versions of its software on eBay. The decision was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which issued a decision on September 10, 2010, reversing the first-sale doctrine ruling and remanding for further proceedings on the misuse of copyright claim. The Ninth Circuit's decision asserted that its ruling was compelled by Ninth Circuit precedent, but observed that the policy considerations involved in the case might affect motion pictures and libraries as well as sales of used software.
Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision regarding copyright infringement in the context of digital video recorders. Among other reasons, it is notable for disagreeing with the Ninth Circuit's holding in MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., regarding whether a momentary data stream is a "copy."
Mavrix Photo, Inc. v. Brand Technologies, Inc., 647 F.3d 1218, is a case in American intellectual property law involving personal jurisdiction in the context of internet contacts.
Structure, sequence and organization (SSO) is a term used in the United States to define a basis for comparing one software work to another in order to determine if copying has occurred that infringes on copyright, even when the second work is not a literal copy of the first. The term was introduced in the case of Whelan v. Jaslow in 1986. The method of comparing the SSO of two software products has since evolved in attempts to avoid the extremes of over-protection and under-protection, both of which are considered to discourage innovation. More recently, the concept has been used in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc.
Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, was a court case where Atari, a video game developer, challenged the United States Copyright Office for refusing copyright registration for their 1976 arcade game Breakout. The Register of Copyrights determined that the game lacked sufficient creativity to qualify as an audiovisual work, and their decision was twice appealed before the registration was granted. The case affirmed that video games are protected from clone developers who mimic a game's audiovisual aspects.
Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business, and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.
Joint authorship of a copyrightable work is when two or more persons contribute enough to the work to be the author of that work. In the case of joint authorship, the authors share the copyright in the work with each other.
A collective work in the copyright law of the United States is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published into a collective whole. The owner of the work has the property rights in the collective work, but the authors of the individual works may retain rights in their contributions. Electronic reproduction of the whole work is allowed, but electronic reproduction of the individual works on their own, outside the context of the work as a whole, may constitute an infringement of copyright.
Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No. 18-1150, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding "whether the government edicts doctrine extends to—and thus renders uncopyrightable—works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated" (OCGA). On April 27, 2020, the Court ruled 5–4 that the OCGA cannot be copyrighted because the OCGA's annotations were "authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties"; thus the Court found that the annotations fall under the government edicts doctrine and are ineligible for copyright.
DC Comics v Mark Towle was a copyright case heard in the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit in September 2015. The case concerned defendant Mark Towle who built and sold replicas of Batmobile in his garage named 'Garage Gotham'. DC Comics initially filed a lawsuit, in May 2011, in the federal district court alleging causes of action for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition arising out of Mark's manufacture and sale of replicas. The plaintiffs, DC Comics, claimed the infringement of their copyright as the replicas sold by Mark were similar to the ones that appeared in 1966 television show Batman and the 1989 film Batman. The issue discussed by the court was "whether a character in a comic book, television program or motion picture is entitled to copyright protection". The ninth circuit followed the precedents and came up with a three-part test to determine the protection given to such characters.
Concepcion v. United States, No. 20-1650, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), is a Supreme Court decision that concerns the district court's ability to intervene using changes of law or fact in exercising their discretion to reduce a sentence.
