Nimmer on Copyright is a multi-volume legal treatise on United States copyright law that is widely cited in American courts, and has been influential for decades as the leading secondary source on American copyright law.
The work was originally published in 1963 by Melville Nimmer, and was for several decades the only significant treatise in United States copyright law. In 1985, Melville's son David Nimmer took over updates and revisions to Nimmer on Copyright. The work is routinely cited by domestic and foreign courts at all levels in copyright litigation, and within the United States in at least 2500 judicial opinions.
The United States Copyright Office held a special celebration on May 6, 2013, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Nimmer on Copyright.[1][2] Similarly, the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. published a special issue of the Journal dedicated to the 50th anniversary, in Winter 2013.[3]
Notable cases
In Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. the court held that photographs were "writings" within the meaning of the Copyright Clause and cited Nimmer on Copyright, which stated that there "appear to be at least two situations in which a photograph should be denied copyright for lack of originality". Judge Lewis Kaplan considered one of those situations, as described by Nimmer, to be directly relevant, namely that "where a photograph of a photograph or other printed matter is made that amounts to nothing more than slavish copying". A slavish photographic copy of a painting thus, according to Nimmer, lacks originality and thus copyrightability under the U.S. Copyright Act.[4][5]
↑ F. Jay Dougherty, "A Story of Two Anniversaries: Nimmer and the Bulletin/Journal of the Copyright Society", 60 Journal of the Copyright Society U.S.A. 149 (Winter 2013).
↑ Simon Stokes (2001). Art and copyright. Hart Publishing. pp.103–104. ISBN1-84113-225-X.
↑ Nancy E. Wolff (2007). The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook. Allworth Communications, Inc. pp.6–9. ISBN1-58115-477-1.
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform 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 and fair dealings doctrine in the United Kingdom.
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. The U.S. "fair use doctrine" is generally broader than the "fair dealing" rights known in most countries that inherited English Common Law. The fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works. In the U.S., fair use right/exception is based 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.
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.
Originality is the aspect of created or invented works that distinguish them from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or substantially derivative works. The modern idea of originality is according to some scholars tied to Romanticism, by a notion that is often called romantic originality. The validity of "originality" as an operational concept has been questioned. For example, there is no clear boundary between "derivative" and "inspired by" or "in the tradition of."
Pierre Nelson Leval is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, he was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author", rather than "never having occurred or existed before".
Melville Bernard Nimmer was an American lawyer and law professor, renowned as an expert in freedom of speech and United States copyright law.
In copyright law, related rights are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighbouring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.
Raymond Theodore Nimmer (1944–2018) was an attorney and former dean of the University of Houston Law Center in Houston, Texas.
The intellectual property rights on photographs are protected in different jurisdictions by the laws governing copyright and moral rights. In some cases photography may be restricted by civil or criminal law. Publishing certain photographs can be restricted by privacy or other laws. Photography can be generally restricted in the interests of public morality and the protection of children.
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience, and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality.
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.
In July 2009, lawyers representing the National Portrait Gallery of London (NPG) sent an email letter warning of possible legal action for alleged copyright infringement to Derrick Coetzee, an editor/administrator of the free content multimedia repository Wikimedia Commons, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
David Nimmer is an American lawyer, law professor, renowned as an expert in United States copyright law. He received an A.B. with distinction and honors in 1977 from Stanford University and his J.D. in 1980 from Yale Law School, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. David Nimmer is of counsel to Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, California. He also serves as a Professor from Practice at University of California, Los Angeles Law School and Distinguished Scholar at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. In 2000, he was elected to the American Law Institute. He has served as a guest professor at the University of Haifa, Yeshiva University, the University of Miami, and Syracuse University.
Paraphrasing of copyrighted material may, under certain circumstances, constitute copyright infringement. In most countries that have national copyright laws, copyright applies to the original expression in a work rather than to the meanings or ideas being expressed. Whether a paraphrase is an infringement of expression, or a permissible restatement of an idea, is not a binary question but a matter of degree. Copyright law in common law countries tries to avoid theoretical discussion of the nature of ideas and expression such as this, taking a more pragmatic view of what is called the idea/expression dichotomy. The acceptable degree of difference between a prior work and a paraphrase depends on a variety of factors and ultimately depends on the judgement of the court in each individual case.
Atari Games Corp. v. Oman was a series of court cases where Atari, a video game developer, challenged the United States Copyright Office for refusing copyright registration for their arcade game Breakout. The Register of Copyrights first rejected Atari's registration in 1987, determining that Breakout lacked sufficient creativity to qualify as an audiovisual work. Atari twice appealed the register's decision before their copyright was granted. Decided in 1992, the case affirmed that video games are protected from clone developers who mimic a game's audiovisual aspects.
The Copyright Society of the US, now the Copyright Society, is the primary scholarly society dedicated to the study of copyright law.
Getaped.com, Inc. v. Cangemi is a 2002 case from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concerned with the issue of whether a copyrightable work made available over the internet could be considered published under the Copyright Act of 1976. Through analogy to traditional physical distribution, the court held that this indeed constituted publication.
Diversey v. Schmidly, 738 F. 3d 1196 is an American federal copyright case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The case addresses several important issues in U.S. copyright law, including the three-year statute of limitations, the making available right, the doctrine of fair use, and contributory infringement.
Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co. is a 2005 copyright case decided by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. It concerns the issue of copyrightability in photography. Jonathan Mannion, the plaintiff, sued the brewer and its advertising agency, Carol H. Williams Advertising (CHWA), alleging they had too closely copied an image he took of basketball star Kevin Garnett.
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