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 with a British legal history, 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 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) is an American tobacco manufacturing company based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and headquartered at the RJR Plaza Building. Founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1875, it is the second-largest tobacco company in the United States. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American, after merging with the U.S. operations of British American Tobacco in 2004.
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.
Nabisco is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.
RJR Nabisco, Inc., was an American conglomerate, selling tobacco and food products, headquartered in the Calyon Building in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. RJR Nabisco stopped operating as a single entity in 1999; however, both RJR and Nabisco still exist.
Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School.
A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt or liability, and most often refers to such a type of settlement in the United States. The plaintiff and the defendant ask the court to enter into their agreement, and the court maintains supervision over the implementation of the decree in monetary exchanges or restructured interactions between parties. It is similar to and sometimes referred to as an antitrust decree, stipulated judgment, or consent judgment. Consent decrees are frequently used by federal courts to ensure that businesses and industries adhere to regulatory laws in areas such as antitrust law, employment discrimination, and environmental regulation.
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 435 U.S. 519 (1978), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a court cannot impose rulemaking procedures on a federal government agency. The federal Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 and an agency's statutory mandate from Congress establish the maximum requirements for an agency's rulemaking process. An agency may grant additional procedural rights in the regulatory process. However, a reviewing court cannot "impose upon the agency its own notion of which procedures are 'best' or most likely to further some vague, undefined public good"; to do so would exceed the limits of judicial review of agency action.
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy though is primarily an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and had been previously regarded as the primary swing vote on the Court.
Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
Paul Drew Clement is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Solicitor General from 2004 to 2008 and is known for his advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court. He established his own law firm, Clement & Murphy, in 2022 after leaving Kirkland & Ellis, following that firm’s decision to end its Second Amendment work. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Georgetown University and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on March 14, 2005, for the post of Solicitor General, confirmed by the United States Senate on June 8, 2005, and took the oath of office on June 13.
Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, 547 U.S. 9 (2006), was a lengthy and high-profile U.S. legal case interpreting and applying the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO): a law originally drafted to combat the mafia and organized crime, the Hobbs Act: an anti-extortion law prohibiting interference with commerce by violence or threat of violence, and the Travel Act: a law prohibiting interstate travel in support of racketeering.
Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.
United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012), is a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 was unconstitutional. The Stolen Valor Act of 2005 was a federal law that criminalized false statements about having a military medal. It had been passed by Congress as an effort to stem instances where people falsely claimed to have earned the medal in an attempt to protect the valor of legitimate recipients. A 6–3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed that the law was unconstitutional and violated the free speech protections under the First Amendment. Despite reaffirming the opinion that was previously issued by the Ninth Circuit, it could not agree on a single rationale. Four justices concluded that a statement's falsity is not enough, by itself, to exclude speech from First Amendment protection. Another two justices concluded that while false statements were entitled to some protection, the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 was invalid because it could have achieved its objectives in less restrictive ways.
Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc., 537 U.S. 418 (2003), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, a claim of trademark dilution requires proof of actual dilution, not merely a likelihood of dilution. This decision was later superseded by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 (TDRA).
Encino Motorcars v. Navarro, 579 U.S. ___ (2016), 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a Supreme Court of the United States case addressing overtime pay. Specifically at issue is whether automotive service advisors are eligible for overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
