Webster's Dictionary is any of the dictionaries edited by Noah Webster in the early nineteenth century, and numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name. "Webster's" has become a genericized trademark in the U.S. for dictionaries of the English language, and is widely used in English dictionary titles. Merriam-Webster is the corporate heir to Noah Webster's original works, which are in the public domain.
Bibliophilia or bibliophilism is the love of books, and a bibliophile or bookworm is an individual who loves and frequently reads books.
Symbolic speech is a legal term in United States law used to describe actions that purposefully and discernibly convey a particular message or statement to those viewing it. Symbolic speech is recognized as being protected under the First Amendment as a form of speech, but this is not expressly written as such in the document. One possible explanation as to why the Framers did not address this issue in the Bill of Rights is because the primary forms for both political debate and protest in their time were verbal expression and published word, and they may have been unaware of the possibility of future people using non-verbal expression. Symbolic speech is distinguished from pure speech, which is the communication of ideas through spoken or written words or through conduct limited in form to that necessary to convey the idea.
The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language: A Complete Encyclopedic Lexicon, Literary, Scientific, and Technological, edited by Rev. John Ogilvie (1797–1867), was an expansion of the 1841 second edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary. It was published by W. G. Blackie and Co. of Scotland, 1847–1850 in two large volumes.
In law, a per curiam decision is a ruling issued by an appellate court of multiple judges in which the decision rendered is made by the court acting collectively. In contrast to regular opinions, a per curiam does not list the individual judge responsible for authoring the decision, but minority concurring and dissenting decisions are signed.
Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary liability rules for trademarks and patents, but for matters relating to copyright, this has solely been a product of case law developments. In other words, courts, rather than Congress, have been the primary developers of theories and policies concerning secondary liability.
The Uruguay Round Agreements Act is an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994. The Marrakesh Agreement was part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of its effects is to give United States copyright protection to some works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.
Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary is a gazetteer by the publisher Merriam-Webster. The latest edition was released in 2001, edited by Daniel J. Hopkins and contained over 54,000 entries. The first edition was published in 1949 and the second edition in 1972.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.
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, 1926, are generally considered public domain.
Geier v. American Honda Motor Company, 529 U.S. 861 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a federal automobile safety standard pre-empted a stricter state rule. The Court held that Alexis Geier, who suffered severe injuries in a 1987 Honda Accord, could not sue Honda for failing to install a driver-side airbag – a requirement under District of Columbia tort law but not Federal law – because Federal law pre-empted the District's rule.
Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201 (1954), was a copyright case decided by the United States Supreme Court. In an opinion written by Justice Stanley F. Reed, the Supreme Court held that the statuettes—male and female dancing figures made of semivitreous china—used as bases for fully equipped electric lamps were copyrightable, even though the lamp itself was a utilitarian mass-produced item.
American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister, 207 U.S. 284 (1907), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held the seizure by the United States marshal in a copyright case of certain pictures under a writ of replevin did not constitute an unreasonable search and seizure.
Fred Fisher Music Co. v. M. Witmark & Sons, 318 U.S. 643 (1943), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held the renewal of copyright for the second term is not an opportunity for an author to renegotiate terms made during the first term that extended beyond the first term's length.
Mifflin v. R. H. White Company, 190 U.S. 260 (1903), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the authorized appearance of a work in a magazine without a copyright notice specifically dedicated to that work transfers that work into the public domain. Its opinion was also applied to the next case, Mifflin v. Dutton.
Mifflin v. Dutton, 190 U.S. 265 (1903), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the authorized appearance of a work in a magazine without a copyright notice specifically dedicated to that work transfers that work into the public domain. It concerned the publication of The Minister's Wooing by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published chapter-by-chapter in Atlantic Monthly before and after a copyright filing, and never with the required notice in the magazine. This case shared its reasoning with the previous case Mifflin v. R. H. White Company.
G. & C. Merriam Co. v. Syndicate Pub. Co., 237 U.S. 618 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that, under the Trademark Act of 1881, after a copyrighted work expires, the word used to designate that work falls into the public domain and cannot be trademarked.
Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros., 222 U.S. 55 (1911), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held producing a motion picture based on a dramatic work can be copyright infringement. The producer of the motion picture is liable even they are not the exhibitor. This does not extend to a restriction of the dramatic work's ideas; it is a recognition of the author's monopoly powers granted by Congress.
Werckmeister v. American Tobacco Co., 207 U.S. 375 (1907), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held a copyright holder is limited to one action to collect infringing copies and statutory damages because the act's remedies are penal and must be observed without construction. Additionally, The United States is not required to be a party to copyright infringement litigation.
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.
