Copyright: Frequently Asked Questions

630 common questions about copyright law, answered in plain English. Each answer links to the full guide or case analysis it comes from. Browse the Copyright case-law archive for the underlying decisions. Educational only, not legal advice.

Will admitting I used the image or name make the case go away faster?
No. Written admissions are the single most damaging thing accused parties volunteer. Saying 'I didn't know' or 'I already took it down' feels cooperative, but it confirms use, can undercut defenses like independent creation or fair use, and gives the claimant leverage. Removing the material is often smart as a practical matter, but do it without a written confession of liability. Let any acknowledgment come later, in a negotiated settlement with a release. Read more: Accused of IP Infringement: What to Do (and Not Do) First ›
Do most IP infringement claims actually go to trial?
No. The overwhelming majority of IP disputes settle or resolve without trial: demand letters settle for a fraction of the opening number, platform disputes end at the takedown/counter-notice stage, and even filed federal lawsuits settle far more often than they're tried. That's why your early moves matter: preserving evidence, avoiding admissions, and understanding your realistic exposure determine your negotiating position, and the negotiation is usually the whole game. Read more: Accused of IP Infringement: What to Do (and Not Do) First ›
Who owns the images or text an AI tool creates for me?
Two separate questions are involved. First, can it be owned at all under copyright? Often the purely AI-generated portion cannot. Second, as between you and the AI company, the tool's terms of service usually decide who may use the output and for what. Many consumer tools assign output rights to the user and allow commercial use, sometimes only on paid tiers, but the terms vary widely and can change. Read the specific terms for the tool you use and keep a copy. Read more: AI and Intellectual Property: A 2026 Guide ›
Are AI deepfakes of a person's face or voice illegal?
Using a realistic AI replica of someone's face or voice for commercial gain can violate the right of publicity, and many states now have laws aimed specifically at unauthorized digital replicas. A federal bill, the NO FAKES Act, has been introduced and revised in Congress but, as of June 2026, has not become law. The rules differ a lot by state, so consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction about a specific situation. Read more: AI and Intellectual Property: A 2026 Guide ›
What are AI clauses in contracts?
AI clauses are contract terms that address how artificial intelligence is used in a deal. They typically cover whether a party may use AI at all, who must disclose that use, who owns AI-assisted output, who pays if that output infringes someone's rights, and whether a vendor may use your data to train its models. They allocate ownership and risk that older contract templates simply do not contemplate. Read more: AI Clauses Every Business Contract Should Address ›
Should my contract require disclosure when a vendor uses AI?
Often yes. Because AI-generated material can raise human-authorship and infringement questions, many businesses now require contractors and vendors to disclose whether and how they used AI on a deliverable, and to confirm a human reviewed it. Disclosure lets you assess ownership and risk before you rely on the work. An attorney licensed in your jurisdiction can tailor the right level of disclosure for your situation. Read more: AI Clauses Every Business Contract Should Address ›
Can I stop a vendor from training AI on my data?
You can try to, through a contract term. A common provision states that the provider may not use your content, prompts, outputs, or usage data to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model without your specific written consent. These no-training and confidentiality terms are heavily negotiated, and the protection you actually get depends on the exact wording, so have a lawyer review it. Read more: AI Clauses Every Business Contract Should Address ›
Can I stop AI companies from training on my content?
There is no guaranteed legal switch, but you can send machine-readable signals that an increasing number of AI crawlers respect. The most common are a robots.txt file that disallows known AI bots, the W3C TDM Reservation Protocol (a 'tdm-reservation: 1' signal), Cloudflare's Content Signals vocabulary, the proposed ai.txt standard, and 'Do Not Train' metadata or registries like Spawning's. On platforms (Adobe, DeviantArt, Tumblr, social networks), check your account settings for an AI opt-out toggle. None of these is foolproof, and compliance is largely voluntary in the US, but they create a documented record that you reserved your rights. Read more: Is It Legal to Train AI on Your Work? (And Can You Stop It?) ›
What did the H3H3 (Hosseinzadeh v. Klein) case actually decide?
In Hosseinzadeh v. Klein (S.D.N.Y. 2017), a federal court held that Ethan and Hila Klein’s video mocking a Matt Hosseinzadeh skit was fair use because they used short clips interspersed with substantial critical commentary: the video was a critique, not a substitute for the original. The judge explicitly warned that the ruling did not bless the whole genre, noting that reaction videos which use someone else’s content with little or no commentary are ‘more akin to a group viewing session’ and raise a very different fair-use question. Read more: Are Reaction Videos Fair Use? The Honest Answer ›
How much of a video can I show in a reaction?
There’s no fixed percentage or second count. The legal test is whether the amount you use is reasonable in relation to your commentary’s purpose. Courts ask whether each clip serves a point you’re actually making. Showing an entire video start-to-finish is the riskiest pattern because your upload can substitute for watching the original, which strikes at the fourth fair-use factor. Pausing frequently, cutting what you don’t discuss, and skipping sections signals that your video is commentary, not a rebroadcast. Read more: Are Reaction Videos Fair Use? The Honest Answer ›
Can you actually make money selling open-source software?
Yes, but rarely from the license itself, because anyone can copy and run open-source code for free. Companies monetize the surrounding value: a hosted or managed cloud service, an open-core product where advanced features are proprietary, paid support and services, or dual licensing where a commercial license lets customers avoid copyleft obligations. The code is the funnel; the business is what you sell alongside it. Read more: Can You Build a Company on Open Source? ›
What is the difference between open source and source-available?
Open source, as defined by the Open Source Initiative, guarantees anyone can use, modify, and redistribute the code for any purpose, including competing commercially. Source-available licenses like the Business Source License (BSL) or Server Side Public License (SSPL) publish the code but add restrictions, often barring you from offering it as a competing hosted service. Source-available code is visible but not OSI-approved open source. Read more: Can You Build a Company on Open Source? ›
Why did MongoDB, Elastic, and HashiCorp change their licenses?
All three relicensed to stop cloud providers from selling their software as a managed service without contributing back. MongoDB moved to the SSPL in 2018, Elastic to a dual SSPL/Elastic License in 2021, and HashiCorp to the BSL in 2023. Each shift traded pure open-source status for the ability to protect their hosted-service revenue, and each triggered community forks. Read more: Can You Build a Company on Open Source? ›
Do I need a contributor license agreement for my open-source project?
If you plan to dual-license, relicense later, or sell the project, yes. A contributor license agreement (CLA) grants your company the rights to every outside contribution, so you can offer a commercial license or change terms without chasing down every contributor. Without one, each contributor keeps copyright in their code, which can make relicensing legally impossible. Lighter projects often use the Developer Certificate of Origin instead. Read more: Can You Build a Company on Open Source? ›
How do fashion designers protect their designs if copyright doesn’t cover clothing?
They stack other rights. Design patents can protect a garment’s, shoe’s, or accessory’s ornamental design for 15 years if filed within 12 months of first disclosure. Crocs and major sneaker brands use them heavily. Trademarks and trade dress protect brand names, logos, and iconic looks that have acquired secondary meaning, like the red-soled shoe. Copyright still covers prints, patterns, and original lace or embroidery. Registering the brand, filing design patents on hero products, and copyrighting each season’s prints is the standard layered playbook. Read more: Can You Copyright a Clothing Design? Fashion, Jewelry & Furniture IP ›
How do I register a work that mixes my own work with AI?
You can register the parts you created, but you must tell the Copyright Office about the AI-generated material. The Office expects applicants to disclose AI-generated content that is more than de minimis and to claim only the human-authored portions (for example, your text, your selection and arrangement of elements, or your edits). In the Zarya of the Dawn matter, the Office registered the author's text and the creative selection and arrangement of the graphic novel, but not the individual AI-generated images. Describe your human contribution clearly and disclaim the AI-generated parts so your registration is accurate. Read more: Can You Copyright AI-Generated Art or Content? ›
Can I use any image or text that has no copyright notice?
No. Since March 1, 1989, when the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, copyright protection has been automatic: no © symbol, registration, or notice is required for a work to be fully protected. Virtually every photo, article, and song you encounter online is copyrighted regardless of markings. Assume content is protected unless you confirm it is public domain or carries an actual license, such as Creative Commons, whose terms you then have to follow. Read more: 10 Intellectual Property Myths That Get People in Trouble ›
Does paying for work mean you own the intellectual property?
No. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the freelance economy. Paying an independent contractor buys you the deliverable and, usually, an implied license to use it for the purpose both sides contemplated. It does not transfer copyright ownership, which stays with the contractor unless there is a signed written assignment or a valid work-made-for-hire agreement covering one of the nine statutory categories. Employees are the opposite: their in-scope work belongs to the employer automatically. Read more: Contractor vs. Employee: Who Owns the IP? ›
What does a client get if there's no IP contract with a contractor?
Typically a nonexclusive implied license to use the work for the purpose it was commissioned: running the website, using the logo, deploying the code. The contractor keeps ownership, which can mean the client cannot freely modify the work, sublicense it, stop the contractor from reusing components for competitors, or register the copyright. Implied licenses are defined by conduct, so their scope is exactly what parties end up fighting about, usually when the relationship sours or the company tries to sell. Read more: Contractor vs. Employee: Who Owns the IP? ›
Do work-made-for-hire rules apply to independent contractors?
Only narrowly. Under 17 U.S.C. § 101, a commissioned work from a contractor is a work made for hire only if it falls within nine specific categories (such as contributions to collective works, parts of audiovisual works, translations, and compilations) AND both parties signed a written agreement saying so. Software, logos, photographs, and most marketing content are not on the list, so labeling them 'work for hire' in a contract accomplishes nothing by itself. You need an express assignment as backup. Read more: Contractor vs. Employee: Who Owns the IP? ›
Who owns a patent on something an independent contractor invents?
The contractor-inventor, absent a written assignment. U.S. patent rights vest in the inventor personally, and there is no patent-law equivalent of the employee work-made-for-hire doctrine. Even a company that paid for 100% of the development owns nothing but, at best, a 'shop right' or implied license to use the invention. Any engagement where a contractor might invent something should include a present-tense assignment ('hereby assigns') of inventions arising from the work. Read more: Contractor vs. Employee: Who Owns the IP? ›
What is a contributor license agreement (CLA)?
A CLA is a contract that a contributor signs before their code is merged into an open-source project. It grants the project a clear copyright license (and usually a patent license) to use, modify, and redistribute the contribution, including the right to release it under the project's chosen license. CLAs don't take away the contributor's ownership; they simply give the project documented permission so it can safely ship and relicense the combined codebase. Read more: Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) ›
What is the difference between a CLA and the DCO?
A CLA is a signed contract that grants the project a license or assignment to your contribution. The Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) is a lightweight alternative: instead of signing an agreement, you add a 'Signed-off-by' line to each commit, certifying you have the right to submit that code. The DCO is far less friction but grants no separate license or patent rights. It relies on the project's inbound license instead. Read more: Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) ›
Why do acquirers care about CLAs in due diligence?
When someone buys a software company, their lawyers verify the company actually owns or is licensed to ship every line of its code. A project with no CLA or DCO may contain contributions with unclear rights: an ownership gap that can lower the price, trigger indemnities, or hold up the deal. A clean CLA record shows every outside contribution came in with documented permission, which makes the codebase far easier to diligence. Read more: Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) ›
Should I opt out of a CCB claim against me?
It's a genuine strategic decision, not a reflex. Opting out ends the CCB case, but the claimant can still sue in federal court, where damages aren't capped at $30,000, statutory damages can reach $150,000 per work for willful infringement of a timely-registered work, and defense costs are far higher. Opting out makes sense when the claimant likely can't or won't fund a federal case; staying in can make sense when the claim is real and you want a cheap, capped resolution. If you do nothing, you're bound, including by a possible default award. Read more: The Copyright Claims Board: Small Claims for Copyright, Explained ›
Is a Higbee & Associates or PicRights letter a scam?
No. They're real, but they're also a business model. PicRights and Copytrack are collection-style agencies that find unlicensed images with reverse-image-search software and send settlement demands; Higbee & Associates is a licensed U.S. law firm that has filed hundreds of federal copyright suits and often takes over claims those agencies can't collect. The underlying copyright claim may be entirely valid even though the demanded amount is inflated. Treat the letter as real, then evaluate the claim's actual strength before paying anything. Read more: I Got a Copyright Demand Letter: Now What? ›
I deleted the image as soon as I got the letter. Am I off the hook?
No. Copyright infringement liability attaches when the unauthorized use happens; removing the image stops new damages from accruing but doesn't erase the past use. That said, prompt removal matters practically: it shows good faith, limits the damages window, and strengthens your negotiating position. Just don't pair the removal with a written apology or admission, and preserve a copy of the page and the image for your own records. Read more: I Got a Copyright Demand Letter: Now What? ›
How much should I actually pay to settle a photo infringement claim?
It depends heavily on registration. If the photo wasn't registered before your use began (or within three months of first publication), the owner can generally recover only actual damages, often close to a reasonable license fee, which for ordinary editorial or stock-style photos is frequently in the tens to low hundreds of dollars. If it was timely registered, statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 per work (more if willful) plus attorney's fees are in play, and settlements run meaningfully higher. Negotiated resolutions at a large discount from the opening demand are the norm. Read more: I Got a Copyright Demand Letter: Now What? ›
Why do platforms remove videos so quickly after a copyright complaint?
Because of the DMCA safe harbor, 17 U.S.C. § 512. Platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok avoid liability for their users' infringement only if they remove content 'expeditiously' when a rightsholder sends a valid takedown notice and terminate repeat infringers. The safe harbor gives platforms a powerful legal incentive to take content down first and sort out the merits later, which is why enforcement feels one-sided to creators. The counter-notice process in § 512(g) is the built-in check, but few creators use it. Read more: Copyright for Online Creators: The Platform Survival Guide ›
Can a creator's channel actually be terminated over copyright?
Yes, and it happens regularly. The DMCA safe harbor requires every platform to adopt and enforce a repeat-infringer termination policy. That requirement, not platform meanness, is where three-strikes rules come from. YouTube terminates channels at three active strikes, Twitch permanently suspends accounts after multiple violations, and TikTok bans repeat infringers. Termination usually takes your entire catalog, subscribers, and monetization with it, which is why avoiding strikes matters more than winning arguments. Read more: Copyright for Online Creators: The Platform Survival Guide ›
How do courts decide the amount of statutory damages within the range?
Courts and juries have wide discretion between the statutory floor and ceiling, guided by factors like the infringer's profits and the owner's losses, the value of the work, the infringer's state of mind, deterrence of the defendant and others, and cooperation once notified. In practice, ordinary commercial misuse of a stock photo or article typically lands in the low four figures to low five figures per work (often benchmarked as a multiple of a normal license fee), while six-figure per-work awards are reserved for egregious, willful conduct with strong evidence, such as counterfeiting or ignoring repeated takedown notices. Read more: Copyright Statutory Damages: What You Could Actually Owe ›
Are statutory damages decided by a judge or a jury?
Either side can demand a jury. In Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, 523 U.S. 340 (1998), the Supreme Court held the Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial on the amount of statutory damages when demanded. That adds unpredictability in both directions: juries produced the famous file-sharing verdicts of $9,250 and $22,500 per song, but they can also come in near the $750 floor when the infringement looks technical or the plaintiff looks opportunistic. Read more: Copyright Statutory Damages: What You Could Actually Owe ›
Can termination rights be waived or signed away in a contract?
No. Section 203(a)(5) provides that termination may be effected notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make any future grant. That language exists because Congress watched the renewal-term system fail: publishers simply made authors assign the renewal term up front. Courts do police the boundary, though. A genuine new agreement that replaces the old grant after termination rights are exercised or negotiated can reset the clock, and disputes over whether a later contract was a prohibited agreement to the contrary or a valid re-grant are a recurring feature of termination litigation, especially in the music industry. Read more: Copyright Termination Rights: The 35-Year Rule, Explained ›
Do termination rights apply to works made for hire?
No. Both § 203 and § 304(c) expressly exclude works made for hire: if a work was created by an employee within the scope of employment, or qualifies as a commissioned work for hire under the § 101 definition, there is no author-side grant to terminate because the hiring party is the author from the start. This is why work-for-hire characterization is the central battleground in termination fights. Record labels have long taken the position that sound recordings are works made for hire, a position artists dispute, and the question has been litigated without a definitive appellate resolution. A recital in a contract does not settle it; the statutory test does. Read more: Copyright Termination Rights: The 35-Year Rule, Explained ›
What happens to a movie or recording made from my work before termination?
It survives. Under the derivative works exception in § 203(b)(1), a derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after termination. So a film made from a terminated novel option can keep being distributed, and the studio keeps paying under the old terms. What the grantee loses is the future: no new derivative works may be prepared after termination. In Mills Music v. Snyder, the Supreme Court read the identically worded exception for pre-1978 grants to preserve even a middleman publisher's contractual share of royalties from derivative-work licenses issued before termination, so expect existing revenue streams to keep flowing on their old split. Read more: Copyright Termination Rights: The 35-Year Rule, Explained ›
What should a creator on a tight budget protect first?
It depends on what is most valuable and most exposed, so this is general information rather than advice for your situation. Copyright protection is automatic and cheap to register, so the bigger strategic decision is usually whether and when to file a trademark on the brand name you are building. An attorney licensed in your jurisdiction can help you sequence these based on your goals and risk. Read more: Copyright vs. Trademark for Creators ›
Do I need a license to cover a song?
Yes, if the composition is still under copyright. For an audio-only release (Spotify, Apple Music, downloads), U.S. law gives you a compulsory mechanical license under 17 U.S.C. § 115: the songwriter cannot say no as long as you pay the statutory royalty, and distributors like DistroKid will handle it for about $12 per year per cover. For a video (including YouTube), you need a synchronization license, which is never compulsory; in practice most YouTube covers survive because publishers monetize them through Content ID instead of blocking them. Read more: Cover Songs on YouTube and Streaming: How Licensing Actually Works ›
Can I monetize a cover song on YouTube?
Usually you can post it, but you typically share revenue rather than keep it all. Most major publishers have Content ID agreements with YouTube: their system claims your cover, and the publisher takes some or all of the ad revenue in exchange for leaving the video up. That's a tolerance arrangement, not a right. A publisher without such a deal, or one that opts to block, can have your cover taken down because no compulsory license exists for video. A direct sync license from the publisher is the only way to truly own your monetization. Read more: Cover Songs on YouTube and Streaming: How Licensing Actually Works ›
What's the difference between a cover and a sample?
A cover is a brand-new recording of an existing composition: you perform every note yourself, so you only need rights to the composition (the written song). A sample lifts audio from someone else's existing sound recording, so you need permission for both the recording (from the label) and the composition (from the publisher), and neither is compulsory. That's why a cover of a hit song costs pennies per stream in mechanical royalties while clearing a sample of the same track can cost thousands plus an ownership share. Read more: Cover Songs on YouTube and Streaming: How Licensing Actually Works ›
Can I change the lyrics or arrangement when I cover a song?
Within limits. The compulsory license at § 115 lets you arrange the song to suit your style (change the key, tempo, genre, and instrumentation), but your arrangement may not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work. New or altered lyrics, translations, and mashups go beyond what the compulsory license allows; those create a derivative work and require the publisher's actual permission. Parody lyrics may qualify as fair use in some cases, but that's a fact-specific defense, not a license. Read more: Cover Songs on YouTube and Streaming: How Licensing Actually Works ›
Why does registration timing matter so much?
To recover statutory damages and attorneys' fees in a U.S. lawsuit, your work generally must be registered before the infringement began, or within three months of first publication. Register late and you may be limited to actual damages, which are often hard to prove and small. Timely registration preserves your strongest remedies. Read more: The Creator's Guide to Copyright (2026) ›
Can I use a song, photo, or clip if I credit the creator?
Crediting someone is not the same as having permission. Credit does not create a license and does not make a use 'fair.' Unless your use clearly falls under fair use, the work is in the public domain, or you have a license, you generally need the owner's permission to copy, post, or build on their work. Read more: The Creator's Guide to Copyright (2026) ›
How long does a DMCA counter-notice take to restore my content?
Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2)(C), the service provider must restore the material no less than 10 and no more than 14 business days after receiving a valid counter-notice, unless the original claimant notifies the platform that it has filed a lawsuit seeking a court order against you. Business days means the real-world wait is typically two to three calendar weeks. Platforms cannot lawfully restore it faster than day 10 and keep their safe harbor, which is why even obviously wrongful takedowns involve a forced waiting period. Read more: DMCA Counter-Notice: How to Fight a Wrongful Takedown ›
What happens after I file a DMCA counter-notice?
The platform forwards your counter-notice to the original claimant. The claimant then has one meaningful move: file a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court and tell the platform it has done so. If they don't within the 10–14 business day window, the platform restores your content. If they do sue, the content stays down and you're now in litigation. In practice, the overwhelming majority of claimants never sue, which is why a counter-notice resolves most wrongful takedowns. Read more: DMCA Counter-Notice: How to Fight a Wrongful Takedown ›
Can I get in trouble for filing a DMCA counter-notice?
Yes, if you file one dishonestly. The counter-notice includes a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification. If you actually copied the work without permission or a real fair-use basis, filing exposes you to perjury liability, a § 512(f) misrepresentation claim, and (because you must consent to federal court jurisdiction) an easy path for the claimant to sue you. A counter-notice is a sworn legal statement, not an appeal button. Read more: DMCA Counter-Notice: How to Fight a Wrongful Takedown ›
Is a YouTube Content ID claim the same as a DMCA takedown?
No. Content ID is YouTube's private, contractual fingerprint-matching system; a Content ID claim usually redirects your monetization rather than removing the video, and you fight it through YouTube's internal dispute process, not a § 512(g) counter-notice. A DMCA takedown is a legal notice under federal law that removes the video and puts a copyright strike on your account. A rejected Content ID dispute can escalate into a real DMCA takedown, at which point the counter-notice process in this guide applies. Read more: DMCA Counter-Notice: How to Fight a Wrongful Takedown ›
Is it illegal to circumvent DRM even if I am not pirating anything?
Often yes, under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1). The statute prohibits circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work, and in the Ninth Circuit's MDY v. Blizzard reading, that violation does not require any copyright infringement at all. Your protection comes from two places: the permanent statutory exemptions (such as reverse engineering for interoperability under § 1201(f) and security testing under § 1201(j)) and the temporary exemptions the Librarian of Congress adopts every three years, which currently cover activities like device repair, jailbreaking, and good-faith security research. If your activity fits an exemption, the conduct ban does not apply. If it does not, the fact that you never copied anything may not save you. Read more: DMCA Section 1201: The Anti-Circumvention Law, Explained ›
Does DMCA 1201 make reverse engineering illegal?
Not categorically. Section 1201(f) is a permanent exemption that permits a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program to circumvent an access control for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created program, to the extent that information is not otherwise readily available and the acts do not constitute infringement. The exemption is narrow: it covers interoperability analysis, not cloning a competitor's product, and courts have read its conditions strictly. Traditional reverse engineering that never touches a technological protection measure is outside § 1201 entirely, though it can still raise contract (EULA) and trade secret questions. Read more: DMCA Section 1201: The Anti-Circumvention Law, Explained ›
What is the DMCA triennial exemption rulemaking?
Congress built a safety valve into § 1201(a)(1): every three years the Librarian of Congress, on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, adopts temporary exemptions for classes of works where the circumvention ban is adversely affecting noninfringing uses. The ninth rulemaking concluded in October 2024, renewing essentially all prior exemptions (vehicle and device repair, jailbreaking, security research, game preservation, text and data mining) and adding new ones, including repair of retail-level commercial food preparation equipment. The tenth cycle opened in June 2026 and will conclude with a new rule in late 2027. Exemptions cover only the act of circumvention, not the trafficking bans, and they expire unless renewed. Read more: DMCA Section 1201: The Anti-Circumvention Law, Explained ›
What are the penalties for violating Section 1201?
Section 1203 gives a civil cause of action to any person injured by a violation. A plaintiff can elect actual damages plus the violator's profits, or statutory damages of $200 to $2,500 per act of circumvention or per device or service trafficked, with treble damages available for repeat violations within three years of a prior judgment and reductions possible for innocent violations. Separately, § 1204 makes willful violations committed for commercial advantage or private financial gain a federal crime, punishable for a first offense by up to $500,000 in fines or five years in prison. Most disputes founders and developers see are civil, and they frequently arrive bundled with copyright, contract, and CFAA claims. Read more: DMCA Section 1201: The Anti-Circumvention Law, Explained ›
What is the DMCA safe harbor in simple terms?
Section 512 of the Copyright Act shields online service providers from money damages for copyright infringement committed by their users, if the provider meets strict conditions. There are four harbors: transmitting data (512(a)), caching (512(b)), hosting user-uploaded content (512(c)), and linking or search (512(d)). For a hosting platform, the core bargain is notice and takedown: register a designated agent with the Copyright Office, remove material expeditiously when a compliant infringement notice arrives, avoid actual or red-flag knowledge of infringement, avoid profiting directly from infringement you control, and terminate repeat infringers. Meet the conditions and you cannot be held liable in damages for user infringement; miss them and you defend the case under ordinary copyright law. Read more: DMCA Section 512 Safe Harbors: How Platforms Avoid Liability ›
How do I register a DMCA agent for my website?
Use the Copyright Office's online DMCA Designated Agent Directory at dmca.copyright.gov. Paper filings are no longer accepted. The fee is $6 per designation, amendment, or resubmission, and a designation expires three years after it is filed unless you renew it by amending or resubmitting (each $6 filing starts a new three-year clock). You must also post the agent's contact information on your own site, typically on a copyright or DMCA policy page. Both steps are required by 512(c)(2). An expired or missing designation forfeits the hosting safe harbor for the period of the lapse, which is one of the cheapest mistakes in all of copyright law to avoid. Read more: DMCA Section 512 Safe Harbors: How Platforms Avoid Liability ›
What counts as a repeat infringer policy under 512(i)?
Section 512(i) conditions every safe harbor on adopting, reasonably implementing, and informing users of a policy providing for termination of account holders who are repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. The statute does not define repeat infringer or dictate a strike count, but case law punishes paper policies. Cox Communications lost its safe harbor before trial in the Sony litigation because it reinstated subscribers it had nominally terminated. What courts look for: a written policy users can see, a working system for tracking notices per user, and evidence you actually terminate in appropriate cases. The Supreme Court's 2026 Cox decision narrowed contributory liability, but it did not soften 512(i) itself. Read more: DMCA Section 512 Safe Harbors: How Platforms Avoid Liability ›
Can I be sued for sending a false DMCA notice?
Yes. Section 512(f) makes any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing (or, on the counter-notice side, that it was removed by mistake) liable for damages, including costs and attorney fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, the copyright owner, or the service provider injured by the misrepresentation. Courts in the Ninth Circuit have added a related duty: a sender must consider whether the use is authorized by law, including fair use, before firing off a notice. In practice 512(f) awards are rare and require bad faith rather than an honest mistake, but abusive takedown campaigns and competitive sabotage are exactly what the section exists to punish. Read more: DMCA Section 512 Safe Harbors: How Platforms Avoid Liability ›
Can I send a DMCA takedown notice myself, without a lawyer?
Yes. There is no rule that a DMCA takedown notice must come from an attorney. The copyright owner, or someone authorized to act for the owner, can send it. The notice simply has to include the six elements the law requires under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), most importantly a good-faith statement and a statement under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to act for the owner. Many platforms even have a web form that walks you through it. That said, if real money or a business dispute is involved, it is worth confirming your situation with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction before you send anything. Read more: Someone Copied Your Content: DMCA Takedown, Explained ›
Does a DMCA takedown work for trademark or someone lying about me?
No. The DMCA notice-and-takedown process is a copyright tool only. It applies when someone copies your original creative work (a photo, video, article, song, or design) without permission. It does not cover trademark infringement, someone using your business name, defamation, or invasion of privacy. Those problems have their own separate legal paths. If you send a DMCA notice over a non-copyright issue, the platform can ignore it, and overstating your claim can create its own risk. Read more: Someone Copied Your Content: DMCA Takedown, Explained ›
What happens if the other person files a counter-notice?
If the person you reported sends a valid counter-notification, the platform forwards it to you and may restore the material. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g), the provider generally must put the content back not less than 10 nor more than 14 business days after receiving the counter-notice. That happens unless, within that window, you notify the platform that you have filed a lawsuit in court seeking to stop the alleged infringement. In other words, a counter-notice puts the dispute back on you: either go to court or the content comes back. Read more: Someone Copied Your Content: DMCA Takedown, Explained ›
Does any insurance cover patent infringement claims?
Standard CGL policies effectively never do. Patent infringement isn't an enumerated advertising-injury offense, and since 2001 the standard ISO IP exclusion expressly bars it. Coverage for patent claims exists only through specialty products: standalone IP defense-cost insurance, patent infringement liability policies, or (for enforcement) abatement policies that fund your own suits. These are a niche market with meaningful underwriting, premiums, and self-insured retentions, but for companies in patent-heavy industries they can be worth pricing given seven-figure defense costs. Read more: Does Insurance Cover IP Claims? ‘Advertising Injury’ Explained ›
What does 'duty to defend is broader than duty to indemnify' mean?
Two separate promises live in a liability policy. The duty to defend obligates the insurer to pay for lawyers to fight a suit whenever the complaint's allegations even potentially fall within coverage; in most states, one potentially covered claim obligates the insurer to defend the entire lawsuit. The duty to indemnify (actually paying a judgment or settlement) is decided later, on proven facts. Practically, this means a lawsuit mixing covered and uncovered theories can still get you a fully funded defense, which is often the most valuable benefit in the policy. Read more: Does Insurance Cover IP Claims? ‘Advertising Injury’ Explained ›
When should I notify my insurer about an IP claim?
Immediately: as soon as a demand letter, marketplace complaint, or lawsuit arrives, before you hire your own lawyer or respond to the claimant. Liability policies require prompt notice of claims, and in many states late notice can reduce or forfeit coverage entirely, especially under claims-made policies where notice within the policy period can be a hard condition. Tender the claim in writing to every potentially applicable policy, current and recent. The insurer may defend under a reservation of rights, but a declined tender costs you nothing. Read more: Does Insurance Cover IP Claims? ‘Advertising Injury’ Explained ›
What is the difference between the composition and the master in music?
Every recorded song carries two separate copyrights. The composition is the underlying song itself, the melody and lyrics, usually controlled by the songwriter and publisher. The master is the specific sound recording you actually hear, usually controlled by the artist or record label. To use a recording in a video, you generally need to license both: a sync license for the composition and a master use license for the recording. Read more: Entertainment & Media IP: A Creator's Guide ›
Can someone steal my idea if it is not protected by copyright?
Copyright protects expression, not ideas, so a bare idea is not copyrightable. But in California, under Desny v. Wilder, an idea can be the subject of an implied-in-fact contract. If you submit an idea conditioned on payment if it is used, the recipient knows that condition and accepts the disclosure, and they then use it, you may have a claim for breach of that implied contract even though the idea itself was never copyrightable. Read more: Entertainment & Media IP: A Creator's Guide ›
What is chain of title and why do distributors demand it?
Chain of title is the documented, unbroken trail of paperwork showing the production company actually owns or controls every right in a project, from the original script and any underlying source material through life rights, talent, and music. Distributors and errors-and-omissions insurers require a clean chain of title before they will release or insure a project, because gaps in ownership expose everyone to infringement claims. Read more: Entertainment & Media IP: A Creator's Guide ›
How do I know if my use is fair use before I publish?
You do not, and no one can tell you with certainty, because fair use is an affirmative defense that only a court resolves definitively. What you can do is assess risk honestly. Ask whether your use has a real justification for copying this particular source rather than just any source, whether you took more than that justification needs, and whether your version can substitute for the original or for a license of it. If the honest answers are 'genuine commentary,' 'only what I discussed,' and 'no one would take mine instead of theirs,' you are in the defensible zone. If any answer is shaky, treat it as a risk decision rather than a legal conclusion. Read more: Is Your Use Fair Use? How to Assess the Risk ›
Does writing down my fair use reasoning actually help?
It helps in narrow but real ways. Contemporaneous notes will not make an unfair use fair, and a court judges the four factors on the facts, not on your memo. But documentation matters at the margins: 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2) lets a court reduce statutory damages toward the $200 innocent-infringement floor and requires remission entirely in two narrow situations: an employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archives who infringed by reproducing a work within the scope of employment, and certain public broadcasting uses of published nondramatic literary works, in each case where the person had reasonable grounds for believing the use was fair. Notes made before publication are also far more persuasive than reconstructions made after a demand letter arrives. Read more: Is Your Use Fair Use? How to Assess the Risk ›
When is buying a license cheaper than relying on fair use?
Usually whenever a license is genuinely available at a routine market rate and your use is anywhere near the licensing market for the work. Compare the license price against the realistic downside: statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. 504(c) run from $750 to $30,000 per work, up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement, plus possible attorney's fees. Even a fight you eventually win costs money and time. If a stock photo costs $50 and a marginal fair-use argument costs you a five-figure defense, the arithmetic is not close. Read more: Is Your Use Fair Use? How to Assess the Risk ›
What does a cease-and-desist letter actually mean for my fair use argument?
It means someone is asserting a claim, not that a court has rejected your defense. A cease-and-desist is a private letter with no independent legal force. It can be accurate, overstated, or entirely wrong, and senders routinely overstate. What it does change is your exposure: after you have been put on notice, continuing the same use makes a willfulness argument easier for the other side, which raises the statutory-damages ceiling. Do not ignore it, do not fire back a confident reply, and have counsel licensed in your jurisdiction read it before you respond. Read more: Is Your Use Fair Use? How to Assess the Risk ›
What is chain of title in film and TV?
Chain of title is the documented, unbroken record of who owns every right in a film or TV project, traced from the original source material all the way to the production company that wants to distribute it. It is built from written agreements: the option or purchase of any underlying book or article, the writer's screenplay agreement assigning the script, any life-rights or location releases, music licenses, and the copyright assignments that move each right up the chain. Distributors and insurers review it to confirm the producer actually owns what they claim to own. This is general education, not legal advice. Confirm your situation with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Film & TV Rights and Chain of Title, Explained ›
Why do distributors and E&O insurers require chain of title?
Because they are buying or insuring risk, not just a movie. A distributor that licenses a film is relying on the producer's promise that the producer owns all the necessary rights; if that promise is false, the distributor can be sued by the real owner. Errors and omissions (E&O) insurance protects against claims that the film infringes someone's copyright, trademark, privacy, or publicity rights. Insurers will not issue a policy, and most distributors will not close a deal, without reviewing a clean chain of title first. A gap signals an unowned right and an uninsurable risk. Read more: Film & TV Rights and Chain of Title, Explained ›
Can I register source code without publicly revealing it?
Yes. The Copyright Office lets you register code while shielding trade secrets. Instead of depositing everything, you submit identifying portions (typically the first 25 and last 25 pages), and you may block out (redact) the portions containing trade secrets, as long as an appreciable amount of original code remains visible. Alternative deposit options exist for short programs and code that is entirely secret. Read more: How to Protect Your Source Code ›
Should source code be a trade secret or a patent?
Most proprietary code is best protected as a trade secret plus copyright. Copyright protects the literal code from copying; trade secret law protects the ideas, algorithms, and architecture as long as you keep them confidential. A patent may fit a genuinely novel, non-obvious technical method, but software patents face a high eligibility bar under Alice v. CLS Bank, and filing publishes your invention, the opposite of secrecy. Read more: How to Protect Your Source Code ›
What contracts do I need to protect source code?
Two are essential. Every employee needs a confidentiality and invention-assignment agreement so the company, not the individual, owns the code. Every contractor or freelance developer needs a written assignment, because absent one, the developer often keeps the copyright even after you pay them. Layer NDAs on top for anyone who sees the code, and use source-code escrow when you license to customers who fear you might disappear. Read more: How to Protect Your Source Code ›
Can I sue a studio for stealing my idea?
Often not under copyright law, because copyright protects only the fixed expression of an idea (the actual words and structure of your script) and never the underlying idea, theme, or concept (17 U.S.C. § 102(b)). But in California you may have a separate claim: a breach of implied-in-fact contract under Desny v. Wilder (1956). The theory is not that you 'own' the idea, but that you offered it for sale, the other side knew it was conditioned on payment, voluntarily accepted the disclosure, and then used it without paying. That is a contract claim, not an ownership claim. Whether you have one depends heavily on the facts of how you pitched it. Talk to an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Idea Theft in Hollywood: Submission & Desny Claims ›
What is a Desny claim?
A Desny claim is a California implied-in-fact contract claim for the unpaid use of a submitted idea, named after the California Supreme Court's 1956 decision in Desny v. Wilder. The idea is that when you pitch a concept for sale under circumstances that show you expect to be paid if it is used, and the recipient takes the pitch knowing those terms and then uses the material, the law can imply a promise to pay even though no one signed anything. It protects your right to be compensated, not a property right in the idea itself. It is a state-law doctrine, strongest and most developed in California's entertainment industry. Read more: Idea Theft in Hollywood: Submission & Desny Claims ›
Does an NDA or release help if my idea gets used?
They cut in opposite directions. A signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before a pitch can strengthen your position by creating an express, written promise of confidentiality and, sometimes, payment. A submission release (the form many studios require before they will look at unsolicited material) usually does the opposite: it often says the company can use similar ideas, owes you nothing unless you have enforceable separate rights, and limits or waives the very claims you might otherwise bring. Read any release carefully before signing, and have an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction review high-stakes versions. Read more: Idea Theft in Hollywood: Submission & Desny Claims ›
Do I really have to write #ad on every sponsored post?
You need a clear and conspicuous disclosure whenever you have a material connection to the brand, which includes paid posts, affiliate links, and even free products you were sent. #ad is the simplest way to do it, placed where viewers will actually see it, before they have to click 'more.' The FTC tells influencers to avoid vague or confusing terms like #sp, #spon, or #collab, and stand-alone terms like 'thanks' or 'ambassador,' because ordinary viewers do not reliably read them as advertising. Attaching the brand name is what rescues the last two: on space-limited platforms the FTC lists forms like #AcmePartner or #AcmeAmbassador as workable options. In video, the disclosure should also be on screen and, ideally, spoken. This is general education, not legal advice; talk to an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction about your situation. Read more: Influencer Brand Deals & FTC Disclosure Rules ›
Can I get in trouble even if the brand never told me to disclose?
Yes. Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides, the influencer can be held responsible for their own undisclosed posts, and the brand can be liable for an endorser's failure to disclose even if the brand never instructed the influencer to leave it out. Disclosure is your personal responsibility as the person speaking to your audience. The Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters and pursued enforcement against both companies and creators. Read more: Influencer Brand Deals & FTC Disclosure Rules ›
Who owns the photos and videos I create for a brand deal?
It depends entirely on the contract. By default, the creator owns the copyright in content they make. Many brand agreements flip that with a 'work made for hire' clause or an assignment, giving the brand full ownership, while others grant the brand only a license to use the content. Read who owns what, how long the brand can use it, on which platforms, and whether the brand can run it as paid ads. An attorney licensed in your jurisdiction can review the terms before you sign. Read more: Influencer Brand Deals & FTC Disclosure Rules ›
Can you legally sell fan art of copyrighted characters?
Usually not without a license. Well-developed, distinctive characters are protected by copyright independent of any single story, so drawing and selling them creates an unauthorized derivative work under 17 U.S.C. § 106(2). Many franchises also hold trademark rights in character names and logos, which adds a second claim when the art goes on merchandise. Most fan-art selling continues anyway because rights holders tolerate small-scale fandom activity, but tolerance is a business decision they can reverse at any time, not a legal right you hold. Read more: Is Selling Fan Art Legal? What Every Artist Should Know ›
Why do fan artists rarely get sued?
Because suing fans is usually bad business, not because the law protects fan art. Fandom drives franchise revenue, and a company that sues hobbyist artists risks a community backlash worth more than any judgment. Enforcement instead flows through cheap, quiet channels: DMCA takedowns of Etsy and Redbubble listings, marketplace IP-complaint programs that delist products and can suspend shops, and cease-and-desist letters to sellers who scale up. Lawsuits are reserved for large commercial operations, but statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work exist if a rights holder ever wants to make an example. Read more: Is Selling Fan Art Legal? What Every Artist Should Know ›
Is fan art fair use if I drew it myself in my own style?
Drawing it yourself doesn't help. Copyright's derivative-work right covers new works based on protected characters, no matter whose hand made them. Your personal style also doesn't change the analysis if the character remains recognizable; conversely, drawing an original character in a famous artist's or studio's style is generally fine, because style itself isn't copyrightable. True parody that comments on the character can be fair use, but a straightforward, admiring depiction sold as merchandise fails the fair-use factors, especially after Warhol v. Goldsmith emphasized commercial purpose. Read more: Is Selling Fan Art Legal? What Every Artist Should Know ›
How can I sell fan art legally?
Use an actual license. Redbubble's Fan Art Partner Program lets artists sell approved designs for dozens of participating brands (including Netflix, NBCUniversal, and CBS properties) with the platform handling the license and revenue split. Some game and entertainment companies publish fan-content policies permitting limited noncommercial or small-scale works, and some run their own licensed-merch programs. Outside a program, the legal route is written permission from the rights holder, and the safe creative route is original characters that evoke a genre without copying anyone's protected characters. Read more: Is Selling Fan Art Legal? What Every Artist Should Know ›
Can Nintendo take down my Let's Play videos?
Legally, yes: Nintendo owns the copyright in its games' audiovisual content and could send takedowns. Since ending its revenue-sharing Creators Program in 2019, Nintendo has instead published Game Content Guidelines that affirmatively allow monetized videos and streams if you add your own creative or editorial input. Simply re-uploading raw footage, cutscene rips, leaked content, or material from unreleased games falls outside the guidelines, and Nintendo updated them in September 2024 to reserve the right to object to content it considers infringing or inappropriate. Read more: Streaming Video Games: Why It's Technically Infringement (and Why It's Allowed Anyway) ›
Why do streamers get DMCA strikes for in-game music?
A publisher's permission to stream its game usually doesn't cover the licensed commercial music inside it, because the publisher licensed those songs for the game, not for your broadcast. Radio stations in Grand Theft Auto, licensed soundtracks in sports and skating titles, and pop songs in story scenes are all owned by labels and publishers whose automated systems scan streams and VODs. That's why some games ship with a 'streamer mode' that swaps or mutes licensed tracks, and why muting in-game music is standard advice for VODs. Read more: Streaming Video Games: Why It's Technically Infringement (and Why It's Allowed Anyway) ›
Is streaming a full story game with all cutscenes fair use?
Almost certainly not, and no court has blessed it. A full playthrough shows the entire copyrighted work, including its narrative 'heart,' and can substitute for playing or buying a story-driven game, which hits the third and fourth fair-use factors hard. That's why publishers of narrative games like Atlus have historically restricted streaming past spoiler points. Your real protection is the publisher's video policy, not fair use, so read it before streaming a story-heavy release. Read more: Streaming Video Games: Why It's Technically Infringement (and Why It's Allowed Anyway) ›
What is the difference between licensing and selling my copyright?
Licensing is renting out permission to use your work under set conditions while you keep ownership of the copyright. Selling (assigning) the copyright transfers ownership to someone else, so you generally lose the ability to control or license the work afterward. Most creators want a license, not an assignment, so they can keep earning from the same work again and again. Read more: How to License Your Creative Work ›
Does a license have to be in writing?
A non-exclusive license can be oral or even implied from conduct, but it is still smart to put it in writing. An exclusive license must be in writing and signed by the copyright owner to be valid under U.S. law. Because an exclusive license transfers a chunk of your rights, the law treats it like a partial sale and requires that signed writing. Read more: How to License Your Creative Work ›
What is the difference between an exclusive and a non-exclusive license?
An exclusive license gives one licensee the right to use your work in a defined way, and you promise not to grant that same right to anyone else (sometimes not even yourself). A non-exclusive license lets you license the same work to many people at once. Exclusive deals usually pay more but lock you in; non-exclusive deals pay less per deal but can be repeated widely. Read more: How to License Your Creative Work ›
Do I need one license or two to use a song in my video?
Usually two. A recorded song you hear is two separate copyrights: the musical composition (the written song: melody, chords, lyrics, owned by the songwriter and publisher) and the sound recording or 'master' (the specific recording, owned by the artist and label). To pair that recording with video you generally need a synchronization ('sync') license for the composition AND a master use license for the recording. If you only have one, you are still infringing the other. This is general education, not legal advice. Confirm your situation with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Music Licensing: Sync, Master & Mechanical Rights ›
What is the difference between a sync license and a mechanical license?
They cover different uses of the same composition. A sync license lets you synchronize a composition in time with visual media: film, TV, ads, YouTube, social video. A mechanical license lets you reproduce and distribute a composition as audio only: pressing CDs or vinyl, selling downloads, or releasing a cover on streaming. Neither one covers the sound recording itself; to use someone else's actual recording you also need a master use license from whoever owns the master. Read more: Music Licensing: Sync, Master & Mechanical Rights ›
Can I record my own cover of a song and release it without permission?
For audio-only distribution, often yes. The law provides a compulsory mechanical license under Section 115, so you can release a cover at a set statutory rate without the songwriter's individual approval, as long as you follow the rules and pay. In the U.S. that is now administered through the Mechanical Licensing Collective for digital uses. But the compulsory license does not cover putting your cover in a video (that needs a sync license) and does not let you copy the original artist's recording (that needs a master use license). Read more: Music Licensing: Sync, Master & Mechanical Rights ›
Do I need permission to sample a song?
Usually yes, and usually twice. A recorded song contains two separate copyrights: the musical composition (the melody, chords, and lyrics, typically owned by a songwriter and publisher) and the sound recording (the specific 'master' you actually hear, typically owned by a record label). When you copy a piece of the actual recording into your track, you are using both works, so you generally need a license from the publisher (for the composition) and a license from the label (for the master). This is general education, not legal advice. Confirm your situation with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Music Sampling & Clearance: What You Actually Need ›
Is there an amount of a song I can sample for free?
There is no reliable 'safe' number of seconds or notes. Courts are split on whether tiny, unrecognizable samples of a sound recording can be excused as 'de minimis.' The Ninth Circuit (VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone) said the de minimis defense can apply to sound recordings; the Sixth Circuit (Bridgeport v. Dimension Films) effectively said it does not, treating any unlicensed copying of a master as infringement. Because the answer can depend on where you are sued, do not rely on a 'just a second' rule. Read more: Music Sampling & Clearance: What You Actually Need ›
Is interpolation cheaper than sampling?
Often, yes. Interpolation means re-recording or re-performing part of a song yourself instead of copying the original audio. Because you are not using anyone's master recording, you generally only need to clear the composition (the publisher's side), not the label's master. That removes one negotiation, which is why interpolation is frequently faster and less expensive. But it is not free: re-recording a recognizable melody or lyric still requires permission from the composition's owner. Read more: Music Sampling & Clearance: What You Actually Need ›
Who owns code written by AI tools like Copilot?
Under current U.S. Copyright Office guidance (2023–2025), purely AI-generated code with no human authorship isn't eligible for copyright: no one owns it. Code you write with an AI assistant is protectable to the extent a human selected, arranged, or meaningfully edited it. Ownership between you and the tool vendor is set by the tool's terms of service, so read them before shipping AI-assisted code in a product. Read more: Open Source & Software IP ›
Does using open-source code mean my software becomes open source?
Only if you use code under a strong copyleft license like the GPL and distribute your product. Permissive licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD) let you use the code in closed-source software as long as you keep the notices. Copyleft licenses can require you to release your own source code under the same terms: the 'viral' effect. License compatibility, not the mere act of using open source, is what determines your obligations. Read more: Open Source & Software IP ›
What does open-source license compatibility mean?
Two open-source licenses are compatible when you can legally combine code under each into one project and satisfy both sets of obligations at the same time. Incompatibility happens when the licenses impose contradictory requirements. For example, one forbids adding restrictions while the other requires them. Permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0 combine easily with almost anything; strong copyleft licenses like the GPL are far pickier about what they can merge with. Read more: Open-Source License Compatibility ›
Can I combine MIT and GPL code in the same project?
Yes, but the result must ship under the GPL. MIT is a permissive license with almost no conditions, so its code can be relicensed into a GPL project. Once you link MIT-licensed code with GPL code to form a single program, the GPL's copyleft governs the combined work: you must release the whole thing under the GPL and provide source. You cannot pull the GPL parts back out and ship them as closed source. Read more: Open-Source License Compatibility ›
Is Apache 2.0 compatible with GPLv2?
No. The Free Software Foundation considers Apache 2.0 incompatible with GPLv2 because Apache's patent-termination and indemnification terms count as extra restrictions GPLv2 does not permit. Apache 2.0 is, however, one-way compatible with GPLv3, which was written to accept those terms. If you must combine Apache 2.0 code with GPL code, use a GPLv3 (or later) project to avoid the conflict. Read more: Open-Source License Compatibility ›
What is the difference between permissive and copyleft licenses?
Permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, Apache 2.0) let you use, modify, and redistribute code (including in closed-source or commercial products) as long as you keep the copyright notice and license text. Copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL, MPL, AGPL) add a reciprocity condition: if you distribute a modified or combined work, you must release that work's source under the same license. Copyleft keeps derivatives open; permissive licenses do not. Read more: Open-Source License Compatibility ›
What is the difference between permissive and copyleft open-source licenses?
Permissive licenses (such as MIT, BSD, and Apache 2.0) let you use, modify, and ship the code in a closed-source product as long as you keep the required notices. Copyleft licenses (such as GPL, LGPL, and AGPL) let you use the code too, but if you distribute software built on it, they can require you to release your own source code under the same terms. The practical question for a startup is whether using a component forces you to open your own code, and copyleft is where that risk lives. Read more: Open-Source Licensing for Software Startups ›
Can using open-source code force my startup to open-source its own product?
It can, if you use strong copyleft code the wrong way. GPL and AGPL are designed so that distributing (or, for AGPL, running a modified version that users reach over a network) software that incorporates the licensed code triggers an obligation to make your corresponding source code available under the same license. Permissive licenses and weak copyleft (LGPL) carry much less of this risk. Always check each dependency's license before you build core product on top of it, and talk to an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if a copyleft component is in your stack. Read more: Open-Source Licensing for Software Startups ›
Do I have to give attribution when I use open-source software?
Almost always, yes. Even the most permissive licenses, like MIT and BSD, require you to keep the original copyright notice and license text when you redistribute the code. Apache 2.0 adds that you must pass along any NOTICE file. Stripping these notices is one of the most common and most avoidable license violations, so build attribution into your release process from day one. Read more: Open-Source Licensing for Software Startups ›
Why is open-source software a red flag in due diligence?
Open source itself isn't the problem. Undisclosed or misused open source is. Copyleft licenses like the GPL and AGPL can require you to release your proprietary source code if you distribute derivative works, and even permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0 carry attribution obligations. Acquirers and investors run software composition analysis scans to find components whose license terms conflict with keeping your code proprietary, because a single violation can cloud ownership of the product they are buying. Read more: Open-Source Risk in Due Diligence ›
What is the difference between copyleft and permissive open-source licenses?
Permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, Apache 2.0) let you use, modify, and redistribute code (including inside closed-source products) as long as you preserve copyright notices and, for Apache 2.0, the NOTICE file and patent terms. Copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL, AGPL) are reciprocal: if you distribute software that incorporates the code, you may have to license your combined work under the same terms and make your source code available. That reciprocity is what makes copyleft a diligence concern. Read more: Open-Source Risk in Due Diligence ›
What is a software composition analysis (SCA) scan?
A software composition analysis scan is an automated tool (such as Black Duck, Snyk, FOSSA, or Mend) that inventories every open-source and third-party component in your codebase, identifies each component's license, and flags license conflicts and known security vulnerabilities. Acquirers and investors commission SCA scans during technical diligence to build a bill of materials and spot copyleft contamination before closing. Running your own scan first lets you fix problems on your timeline, not theirs. Read more: Open-Source Risk in Due Diligence ›
How do I fix open-source license problems before a deal?
Start with an inventory: run an SCA scan to produce a software bill of materials listing every dependency and its license. Then triage: replace or remove components under incompatible copyleft licenses, isolate weak-copyleft libraries so they are only dynamically linked, and confirm attribution and NOTICE files are complete. Adopt a written open-source policy governing future use. Remediation takes weeks to months, so begin well before you raise or sell. Read more: Open-Source Risk in Due Diligence ›
What is the difference between an option and a purchase in film deals?
An option rents the exclusive right to develop a property, like a book, script, or life story, for a set period such as 12 to 18 months, in exchange for an option fee. A purchase actually buys the underlying rights. Most deals are structured as an option with a pre-negotiated purchase price, so the producer only pays the full amount if and when they 'exercise' the option and move the project into production. Read more: Option & Rights Agreements for Books, Scripts & Stories ›
How much should an option fee be?
There is no fixed rate, and option fees range widely from a token sum to a meaningful percentage of the purchase price, often in the neighborhood of 10 percent. What matters most is whether the option fee is applicable against the purchase price, how long the option lasts, what a renewal costs, and what the agreed purchase price will be if the option is exercised. A small option fee can still tie up valuable rights for a long time, so the full structure matters more than the headline number. Read more: Option & Rights Agreements for Books, Scripts & Stories ›
Do I need to buy someone's life rights to tell their true story?
Facts and real events are not protected by copyright, so you do not technically need permission to tell a true story drawn from public information. A life-rights agreement is bought to reduce legal risk: the subject grants cooperation and access and typically releases claims for defamation, invasion of privacy, and right of publicity. It is risk management and access, not ownership of the facts. Talk to an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation. Read more: Option & Rights Agreements for Books, Scripts & Stories ›
Do I have to register a copyright to protect my content from theft?
No. Under U.S. law your work is protected by copyright the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form. You do not have to register to own the copyright or to send a DMCA takedown notice. But registration with the U.S. Copyright Office unlocks powerful enforcement tools: you generally must register before you can file a copyright lawsuit over a U.S. work, and if you register before the infringement begins (or within three months of first publishing the work), you may be eligible for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement, plus attorney's fees. For anything you publish and care about commercially, timely registration is the single strongest step you can take. Confirm specifics with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: How to Protect Your Content From Theft Online ›
What is the fastest way to get stolen content taken down?
For most creators, the fastest free option is a DMCA takedown notice sent to the platform hosting the copy: a host, social network, marketplace, or search engine. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512, platforms that want to keep their legal 'safe harbor' must act quickly to remove infringing material once they receive a proper notice from the copyright owner. Many sites (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Etsy, and others) have built-in web forms that walk you through it, and content often comes down within days. You usually do not need a lawyer to send one, but if money or a business dispute is involved, it is worth confirming your approach first. Read more: How to Protect Your Content From Theft Online ›
Can I get in trouble for sending a takedown notice?
Yes, if you are careless or dishonest. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), anyone who knowingly makes a material misrepresentation in a takedown notice can be held liable for the other side's damages and attorney's fees. The Ninth Circuit's Lenz v. Universal decision also held that a copyright owner must consider whether the use might be fair use before sending a notice. So only target content that actually copies your work, only claim rights you really hold, and pause before targeting commentary, criticism, parody, or news use that may be protected. When in doubt, get advice from an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: How to Protect Your Content From Theft Online ›
Can I protect a story idea or a title?
Not through copyright. Copyright protects original expression that has been fixed in a tangible form (the actual words, scenes, dialogue, and structure of your script), not the underlying idea, concept, premise, or genre, and not titles or short phrases. So a logline like 'a shark terrorizes a beach town' is free for anyone to use; what is protected is the specific way you wrote it out. If you need to share an idea or pitch before it is fully written, the practical tools are contracts and confidentiality (an NDA) plus a possible implied-contract or 'submission' claim under state law, not copyright. This is general education, not legal advice. Read more: How to Protect a Screenplay, Script or Story Idea ›
What is the public domain cutoff year in 2026?
As of January 1, 2026, published works from 1930 entered the U.S. public domain, because the maximum term for works published before 1978 is 95 years from publication (1930 + 95 = 2025, expiring at the end of that year). That 95 years is an outer limit rather than a floor, since many pre-1978 works lost protection earlier for lack of a copyright notice or a renewal filing. So in 2026, anything published in or before 1930 is generally public domain in the United States. Sound recordings follow a separate schedule: recordings from 1925 entered the public domain in 2026. Always confirm a specific work's status before relying on it. Read more: Public Domain & Creative Commons, Explained ›
Can I use a Creative Commons image for commercial purposes?
It depends on the license. CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA all allow commercial use. But any license with the 'NC' (NonCommercial) element (CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND) prohibits use that is primarily aimed at commercial advantage. Selling a product, running ads, or monetizing content typically counts as commercial. Read the license elements before you use anything, and when money is involved, confirm with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Public Domain & Creative Commons, Explained ›
Does 'found online for free' mean I can use it?
No. This is one of the most expensive myths in copyright. Most images, songs, articles, and videos online are protected the moment they are created. No copyright notice or © symbol is required. The absence of a price tag or a watermark does not make a work free to use. Unless the work is clearly in the public domain or carries a license that covers your specific use, assume you need permission. Read more: Public Domain & Creative Commons, Explained ›
Can software be both copyrighted and patented?
Yes, and serious products usually should be. Copyright protects the specific code you wrote (the literal source and object code as creative expression) and attaches automatically the moment you save the file. A patent protects the underlying functional invention or method, if it clears the eligibility bar. Because they protect different things (expression versus function), the two don't cancel out; layering them, plus trade secret protection for what stays private, gives the broadest coverage. Read more: Software: Patent vs. Copyright ›
Why are software patents so hard to get after Alice?
In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank (2014), the Supreme Court held that simply implementing an abstract idea (like a business method or mathematical formula) on a generic computer is not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Examiners now apply a two-step test: is the claim directed to an abstract idea, and if so, does it add an inventive concept that is 'significantly more'? Claims tied to a concrete technical improvement pass more often than claims that merely automate a known process. Read more: Software: Patent vs. Copyright ›
Can businesses use TikTok sounds in their videos?
Only sounds from TikTok's Commercial Music Library. TikTok's licensing deals with labels and publishers cover personal, non-commercial use. Business accounts are cut off from the general music library entirely and limited to the CML, a pre-cleared catalog of roughly a million mostly library and emerging-artist tracks. Using a trending chart song in brand content requires your own sync and master licenses from the publisher and label. Major labels have sued brands over exactly this, most famously the Bang Energy cases, so it's an enforced rule, not a technicality. Read more: TikTok Sounds and Commercial Use: What Brands and Creators Can't Do ›
Who owns an original sound on TikTok?
The person who created the underlying recording owns it: copyright vests in the creator at fixation, not in TikTok and not in whoever's video made it famous. Uploading grants TikTok a broad license to host and let others use the sound on the platform, but ownership stays with the creator. That means a viral original sound is a real asset its creator can license off-platform, and it also means brands can't treat original sounds as free just because they're user-generated: someone owns that audio, and commercial use still needs their permission. Read more: TikTok Sounds and Commercial Use: What Brands and Creators Can't Do ›
Can I reuse a TikTok sound in an Instagram Reel or YouTube Short?
Not by exporting or re-recording it. TikTok's music licenses cover use inside TikTok only, so ripping a sound and placing it in a Reel or Short breaks the license chain. The use on the other platform is unlicensed unless that platform's own music library independently offers the track and you add it through that platform's tools. The same logic applies in reverse. For crossposted brand content, the safe workflow is licensing music that's cleared for every platform in the campaign, or using each platform's commercial library natively. Read more: TikTok Sounds and Commercial Use: What Brands and Creators Can't Do ›
Can you play music on Twitch?
Only music you have rights to. Playing Spotify, Apple Music, the radio, or any commercial recording on stream is copyright infringement (Twitch's own music guidelines say so explicitly), even though live enforcement is spotty. Safe options include music you wrote and recorded yourself, tracks from stream-safe libraries like StreamBeats, Pretzel, or Epidemic Sound (with an active subscription), public domain works you've verified, and licensed DJ sets inside Twitch's DJ Program. The fact that thousands of streamers play chart music without visible consequences reflects enforcement gaps, not permission. Read more: Music on Twitch: What Gets You DMCA'd (and What's Actually Safe) ›
What happens if you get a DMCA strike on Twitch?
Twitch removes or disables the flagged content, notifies you by email and in your dashboard, and records a strike under its repeat-infringer policy. Twitch's DMCA Guidelines do publish the number: a user is considered a repeat infringer, and the account is terminated, once they accrue three copyright strikes. What Twitch doesn't specify is how long a strike stays on the account, only that strikes are not permanent. You can resolve a strike by getting the rightsholder to retract the claim, by filing a DMCA counter-notification if you genuinely had rights (which gives the claimant roughly two weeks to sue or the content is restored), or, if the strike is eligible, by completing Twitch's Copyright School. Deleting the offending VODs and clips going forward is the essential damage-control step. Read more: Music on Twitch: What Gets You DMCA'd (and What's Actually Safe) ›
Why do Twitch VODs get muted but live streams don't?
Twitch runs audio-recognition scanning (via Audible Magic) on recorded content (VODs and past broadcasts) and mutes matched segments in blocks, but it does not apply the same automated matching to live broadcasts. That creates the dangerous illusion that live music use is fine. Legally, the live performance is just as infringing as the recording, and rightsholders can and do send DMCA notices targeting live and clipped content; the 2020 DMCA wave was built largely on old clips. Muting is Twitch's protective filter, not the boundary of your liability. Read more: Music on Twitch: What Gets You DMCA'd (and What's Actually Safe) ›
Is singing a cover song on Twitch allowed?
Twitch's music guidelines carve out one narrow lane: a cover performed entirely live in your stream, with a good-faith effort to perform the song as written and every audio element created by you: no karaoke tracks, backing recordings, or instrumentals owned by others. That's Twitch policy, not a full legal clearance: the songwriter's composition rights are still in play, and the VODs, clips, and exports of your performance aren't clearly covered the way YouTube's publisher deals cover them. Unlike YouTube, Twitch has no revenue-share system that converts covers into a tolerated monetized use. In practice, enforcement against small singing streams is rare, but the strike risk on recorded content is real. Read more: Music on Twitch: What Gets You DMCA'd (and What's Actually Safe) ›
What are the 4 types of intellectual property?
The four canonical types are copyright (original creative works like writing, music, photos, and software), trademarks (brand identifiers like names, logos, and slogans), patents (new and non-obvious inventions, plus ornamental designs), and trade secrets (valuable confidential business information like formulas and algorithms). Many lawyers add a fifth: the right of publicity, which protects a person's name, image, and likeness from unauthorized commercial use. Read more: The 4 Types of Intellectual Property (Plus the One Everyone Forgets) ›
Can one product be protected by multiple types of IP at once?
Yes, that's the norm for valuable products, not the exception. A single sneaker can carry a trademarked brand name and logo, a design patent on the sole's ornamental shape, utility patents on cushioning technology, copyright in its advertising, trade secrets in its manufacturing process, and a licensed athlete's right of publicity. Smart IP strategy deliberately layers types so that when one right expires or fails, others still stand. Read more: The 4 Types of Intellectual Property (Plus the One Everyone Forgets) ›
What is the difference between a patent and a trade secret?
They're opposite bargains over the same asset. A patent requires you to publicly disclose exactly how your invention works in exchange for roughly 20 years of exclusivity, after which anyone may use it. A trade secret requires you to disclose nothing and can last indefinitely (Coca-Cola's formula has been secret since 1886), but it gives no protection against independent invention or reverse engineering. Patent what competitors could reverse-engineer; keep secret what they can't. Read more: The 4 Types of Intellectual Property (Plus the One Everyone Forgets) ›
Can I use a song, font, or image commercially without permission?
Usually no. Most songs, photographs, illustrations, and font software are protected by copyright (or a license agreement) the moment they are created, and selling a product is a commercial use. Unless the work is clearly in the public domain or a license expressly allows your specific use, you generally need permission. 'Royalty-free' and 'free download' do not mean license-free. When in doubt, get a written license and confirm your situation with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Can You Legally Use That Song, Font, or Image on Your Product? ›
Is there a number of seconds of a song I can use legally?
No. There is no 'magic number' of seconds: no 30-second, 15-second, or 6-second rule that automatically makes use legal. That is a myth. Fair use is decided case by case using four factors, and even a few seconds can infringe if they capture the recognizable 'heart' of the song. Amount used is only one factor a court weighs, not a safe-harbor. Read more: Can You Legally Use That Song, Font, or Image on Your Product? ›
Can I legally use AI-generated images and music for my business?
Often yes, but with caveats. Most popular tools grant paying users a commercial-use license in their terms of service, so you can put the output in ads, products, or content. The harder questions are whether you actually own exclusive rights to that output (in the U.S., purely AI-generated material generally cannot be copyrighted because it lacks human authorship) and whether the output happens to copy someone else's protected work, brand, or likeness. Read your tool's terms and avoid prompts that target real artists, brands, or celebrities. For your specific situation, consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. Read more: Using AI-Generated Images & Music Commercially: What's Safe? ›
Can AI-generated content infringe someone else's copyright or trademark?
Yes. AI tools are trained on large amounts of existing material, and an output can sometimes reproduce a recognizable image, melody, lyric, logo, character, or a real person's voice or likeness. If it does, using it commercially can expose you to copyright, trademark, or right-of-publicity claims regardless of what the tool's terms say. The safest approach is to avoid prompting for named artists, brands, or celebrities and to review outputs before publishing. When the stakes are high, have a licensed attorney review your use. Read more: Using AI-Generated Images & Music Commercially: What's Safe? ›
How many seconds of a movie can I legally use in my video?
There is no legal second count: the 10-second and 30-second 'rules' are myths with no basis in the Copyright Act. Fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 asks whether the amount you used is reasonable in relation to a transformative purpose like criticism or commentary, so thirty seconds that you actually analyze can be fair while five seconds used as decoration is not. Courts have found short takings unfair when they grabbed the heart of a work, and long ones fair when the commentary genuinely needed them. Read more: Using Movie and TV Clips in Your Videos: How Much Is Actually Fair Use? ›
Can I use movie clips in monetized YouTube videos?
Monetization doesn't kill fair use, but it counts against you on the first factor, especially after Warhol v. Goldsmith emphasized commercial purpose. A monetized video essay that criticizes and analyzes a film, using only the clips its arguments need, can still be solidly fair. The bigger practical issue is Content ID: studios' fingerprinting claims clips automatically regardless of fair use, so expect claims on monetized videos and be ready to use the dispute process. Many film critics win disputes routinely. Read more: Using Movie and TV Clips in Your Videos: How Much Is Actually Fair Use? ›
Can I use movie trailers freely since they're promotional?
No. Trailers are copyrighted audiovisual works like any other studio content, and 'they released it for free publicity' is not a license. In practice studios tolerate trailer reactions and breakdowns more than film-footage uses because trailer commentary serves their marketing, and Content ID policies on trailers are often set to track or monetize rather than block. But that's tolerance, not permission, and it varies by studio; your fair-use analysis for trailer footage is the same four-factor test as for the film itself. Read more: Using Movie and TV Clips in Your Videos: How Much Is Actually Fair Use? ›
What is intellectual property in simple terms?
Intellectual property (IP) is the set of legal rights the law attaches to certain creations of the mind: creative works, brand names, inventions, confidential business know-how, and even a person's identity. Owning IP doesn't mean owning an idea; it means owning a bundle of exclusive rights to do specific things with a specific expression, mark, or invention, such as copying it, selling it, or licensing it, and to stop others from doing those things without permission for a limited time. Read more: What Is Intellectual Property? A Plain-English Explanation ›
What are the main types of intellectual property?
The canonical four are copyright (creative expression like books, music, photos, and software), trademarks (brand identifiers like names and logos), patents (inventions and designs), and trade secrets (valuable confidential information like formulas and customer lists). A fifth, the right of publicity, protects a person's name, image, and likeness from unauthorized commercial use. Most real products are protected by several types at once. Read more: What Is Intellectual Property? A Plain-English Explanation ›
What is not protected by intellectual property law?
IP law never protects abstract ideas, facts, or discoveries as such. Copyright's idea–expression rule, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), protects how you expressed something, not the concept behind it. Facts and data are free for everyone to use. Laws of nature and natural phenomena can't be patented. And functional product features get no protection unless they qualify for a patent. Trademark and copyright can't be used as a back door to monopolize how something works. Read more: What Is Intellectual Property? A Plain-English Explanation ›
Do you have to register intellectual property to own it?
It depends on the type. Copyright exists automatically the moment an original work is fixed in tangible form, and trademark rights arise from actually using a mark in commerce, though registration adds major benefits for both, including the right to sue for copyright infringement and nationwide trademark priority. Patents are the opposite: no application, no patent. Rights exist only if the government grants them. Trade secrets require no filing at all, just genuine, ongoing secrecy measures. Read more: What Is Intellectual Property? A Plain-English Explanation ›
What is intellectual property infringement in simple terms?
IP infringement means violating one of the exclusive rights the law grants to an IP owner, and each type of IP has its own test. For copyright, it's copying a protected work with substantial similarity. For trademarks, it's using a mark in commerce in a way likely to confuse consumers about source. For patents, it's making, using, selling, or importing something covered by the patent's claims, even if you invented it independently. For trade secrets, it's acquiring or using a secret through improper means like theft or breach of confidence. Read more: What Counts as IP Infringement? (And What Doesn't) ›
Is it infringement if I created something similar without copying?
It depends entirely on the type of IP. Independent creation is a complete defense to copyright infringement. If you never saw or copied the original, identical work infringes nothing. It's also lawful for trade secrets, where independent discovery and reverse engineering are legitimate. But patent infringement is strict liability: if your product falls within an issued patent's claims, you infringe even if you'd never heard of the patent. That asymmetry surprises more businesses than any other rule in IP law. Read more: What Counts as IP Infringement? (And What Doesn't) ›
What's the difference between direct and secondary infringement?
Direct infringement means you personally committed the violating act: copied the work, sold the confusing product, practiced the patented invention. Secondary liability reaches people who enable or profit from someone else's direct infringement: contributory infringement (knowingly materially contributing, like supplying a component with no non-infringing use) and vicarious liability (having the right to control the infringer plus a direct financial benefit). This is why platforms like YouTube and Etsy remove content on notice. The DMCA's § 512 safe harbors protect them from secondary copyright liability only if they take down promptly. Read more: What Counts as IP Infringement? (And What Doesn't) ›
Does not knowing about someone's IP protect me from infringement claims?
Generally no. Ignorance is not a defense to liability for copyright, trademark, or patent infringement; at best it reduces damages. An innocent copyright infringer may see statutory damages reduced to as little as $200 per work under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2), while willfulness pushes them up to $150,000. In patent law, knowledge mainly affects whether damages get enhanced up to threefold for willfulness under 35 U.S.C. § 284. The one context where your state of mind is central to liability itself is trade secrets, where misappropriation requires knowing or having reason to know the information was improperly obtained. Read more: What Counts as IP Infringement? (And What Doesn't) ›
Who owns code generated by GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT?
Under the major tools' terms of service, the provider assigns whatever rights it has in the output to you, the user. But a tool can only transfer rights it actually holds, and if the output isn't copyrightable (no human author) or reproduces someone else's licensed code, there may be no exclusive right to assign. So the terms give you ownership of your side of the bargain, not a guarantee the code is protectable or free of third-party claims. Read more: Who Owns AI-Generated Code? ›
Does AI-generated code infringe open-source licenses?
It can. AI coding tools are trained on public repositories, including GPL and other copyleft code, and can occasionally emit near-verbatim snippets that carry license obligations. The GitHub Copilot litigation (Doe v. GitHub) tested exactly this. The safest practice is to treat AI output as untrusted: scan for copied code, check license compatibility, and keep attribution records before shipping it in a product. Read more: Who Owns AI-Generated Code? ›
How do I protect my company from AI code license risk?
Adopt a written AI-coding policy, require human review of every suggestion, run license and code-similarity scanning in your build pipeline, and keep provenance records of what was AI-assisted. In contracts, add representations and indemnities addressing AI-generated deliverables. For anything you plan to register or license, ensure a human meaningfully authored it so you have an enforceable copyright to assert. Read more: Who Owns AI-Generated Code? ›
Do I own the text or images an AI tool generates for me?
Usually you have the contractual right to use them, but that is set by the tool's terms of service, not a guarantee of copyright. OpenAI, for example, assigns output to the user, while some image tools only grant ownership to paying subscribers. Read the terms for the specific tool and plan you use. Read more: Who Owns the Output of an AI Tool? ›
Can I copyright purely AI-generated content?
Generally no. The U.S. Copyright Office's 2025 guidance holds that purely AI-generated material lacks the human authorship copyright requires, and that prompts alone are not enough. Works where a human makes meaningful creative contributions using AI as a tool may be protectable in part. Read more: Who Owns the Output of an AI Tool? ›
Isn't a logo a work made for hire if I commissioned it?
Usually no. A commissioned work only counts as a work made for hire if it both fits one of nine narrow statutory categories and is named a work made for hire in a signed agreement. A standalone logo almost never fits those nine categories, so a written copyright assignment is the reliable way to own it. Read more: Do You Own the Logo You Paid a Freelancer to Make? ›
How do I fix it if I never got anything in writing?
Go back to the designer and ask them to sign a short copyright assignment now, even after the fact. Most freelancers will sign, sometimes for a small fee. Get it before the relationship sours, because once you and the designer disagree, your leverage drops sharply. Read more: Do You Own the Logo You Paid a Freelancer to Make? ›
What qualifies as a work made for hire?
Only two things, under 17 U.S.C. § 101. First, a work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment, with ‘employee’ decided under common-law agency factors from CCNV v. Reid, not by what the contract calls the person. Second, a specially ordered or commissioned work that falls within one of nine listed categories (like a contribution to a collective work, part of an audiovisual work, or a translation) AND that both parties agreed in a signed writing would be a work made for hire. Anything outside those two paths is not a work made for hire, no matter what the contract says. Read more: Work Made for Hire, Actually Explained ›
Is freelance work automatically work for hire if the contract says so?
No. For an independent contractor, a work-for-hire clause only works if the deliverable fits one of the nine statutory categories in § 101. Most common freelance deliverables, including logos, websites, photographs commissioned individually, and standalone software, don't clearly fit any of them. When the categories don't apply, the clause is legally empty and the freelancer remains the author and owner. That's why well-drafted contracts pair the work-for-hire language with a backup assignment clause transferring the copyright if the work-for-hire designation fails. Read more: Work Made for Hire, Actually Explained ›
What's the difference between a work made for hire and an assignment?
Ownership versus authorship. An assignment transfers a copyright from the creator to the buyer, but the creator remains the legal author. That means the creator (or their heirs) can terminate the assignment roughly 35 years later under 17 U.S.C. § 203 and reclaim the rights. A work made for hire makes the hiring party the author from the moment of creation, so there is nothing to terminate and no clawback right ever exists. The copyright term also differs: 95 years from publication or 120 from creation for works made for hire, versus life of the author plus 70 years otherwise. Read more: Work Made for Hire, Actually Explained ›
Why is a work-for-hire clause risky with California freelancers?
Because California statutorily converts the relationship. Under Labor Code § 3351.5(c) and Unemployment Insurance Code §§ 621(d) and 686, a person engaged under a signed work-made-for-hire agreement is treated as a statutory employee (and the commissioning party as an employer) for workers' compensation and unemployment insurance purposes. A business that drops a casual work-for-hire clause into a California freelance contract can unknowingly take on obligations to carry workers' comp coverage and make unemployment contributions. Many companies dealing with California contractors use a pure assignment instead. Read more: Work Made for Hire, Actually Explained ›
Can I use 10 seconds of a copyrighted song on YouTube without a claim?
No. The 10-second rule is a myth. Copyright law has no minimum free duration, and Content ID routinely matches clips of just a few seconds. Whether a short use is lawful depends on fair use's four factors, not a stopwatch, and music is treated especially strictly because even brief recognizable fragments have licensing value. Practically, expect any recognizable commercial music, at any length and any volume, to be detected and claimed. Read more: YouTube Copyright Claim vs. Strike (and How Content ID Actually Works) ›
If my Content ID dispute is rejected, will my channel get a copyright strike?
No. A rejected dispute is not a copyright strike and does not create one. The claim simply stays on the video with whatever policy the claimant set, and your channel takes no penalty. A strike enters the picture only if the claimant files a formal copyright removal request (a DMCA takedown), which is a separate legal act. That risk becomes real at the appeal stage: if you appeal a rejected dispute, the claimant has 7 days to either release the claim or convert it into a takedown, and only a valid takedown produces a strike. So only ride the ladder to appeal if you could absorb a strike or a counter-notice fight. Read more: YouTube Copyright Claim vs. Strike (and How Content ID Actually Works) ›
What is the dominant-author test?
When several people contribute to a single work and none qualifies as a joint author, courts ask which contributor is the dominant author by weighing decision-making authority, billing, and written agreements with third parties. In Casa Duse the production company that initiated the project, hired the cast and crew, and controlled the schedule was the dominant author. Read more: 16 Casa Duse v. Merkin: The Dominant Author and Who Owns a Film ›
Why was Napster contributorily liable?
Napster had actual and constructive knowledge that specific infringing files were available on its system and materially contributed to the infringement by providing the centralized index, search, and connection services that made the trading possible. Read more: A&M Records v. Napster: Contributory and Vicarious Liability in the P2P Era ›
How did the vicarious-liability holding differ?
Vicarious liability did not require knowledge. Napster had a direct financial interest in the infringing activity, which drew users, and it had the right and ability to police its centralized index but failed to patrol its system to the fullest extent possible. Read more: A&M Records v. Napster: Contributory and Vicarious Liability in the P2P Era ›
Did the Sony safe harbor protect Napster?
No. The court held Sony limited only when knowledge of specific infringement may be imputed from a product's design, not when a defendant has actual knowledge of specific infringing material and the ability to block access to it. Read more: A&M Records v. Napster: Contributory and Vicarious Liability in the P2P Era ›
Why wasn't Aalmuhammed a joint author when his contributions were used in the film?
Because joint authorship requires control and a mutually manifested intent to be co-authors, not merely a copyrightable contribution. Aalmuhammed lacked decision-making control over the final film, and the principals never treated him as a co-author. Read more: Control, Intent, and the Limits of Collaboration: Aalmuhammed v. Lee ›
Does Aalmuhammed mean only the director can be a film's author?
No. It means authorship turns on who superintends the work and whether the parties intended co-authorship. Multiple people can be joint authors if they share control and intend to be co-authors; the test simply prevents every contributor from automatically qualifying. Read more: Control, Intent, and the Limits of Collaboration: Aalmuhammed v. Lee ›
How can a contributor protect an ownership interest?
By negotiating a written agreement that designates co-authorship or assigns specified rights before contributing. Courts give great weight to objective manifestations of intent, and a contract is the clearest one. Read more: Control, Intent, and the Limits of Collaboration: Aalmuhammed v. Lee ›
Why did Aereo use thousands of tiny antennas?
To argue that each subscriber's stream came from a unique, individually-tuned antenna and a personal copy, making every transmission "private" under the Second Circuit's Cablevision reasoning rather than a public performance. Read more: ABC v. Aereo: When 'Looks Like Cable' Beat the Engineering ›
Why didn't that argument work?
The Court looked past the architecture to function. Because Aereo behaved like the cable systems Congress meant to cover, and because the Transmit Clause reaches transmissions to the public even from separate copies at different times, the service publicly performed the works. Read more: ABC v. Aereo: When 'Looks Like Cable' Beat the Engineering ›
Does Aereo make my cloud DVR or storage locker illegal?
The majority said its holding was limited and did not decide that question, distinguishing services whose users have lawful rights to the stored content. The exact line remains unsettled. Read more: ABC v. Aereo: When 'Looks Like Cable' Beat the Engineering ›
Did Alaska Stock have to name every photographer to register the images?
No. The Ninth Circuit held that because the agency owned the copyrights in the component photographs and followed the Copyright Office's prescribed collection-registration procedure, registering the collection registered the individual images without listing each author and title. Read more: One Application, Thousands of Photographs: Alaska Stock v. Houghton Mifflin and Group Registration ›
Does this case still control how I register photographs today?
Its reasoning remains influential, but the Copyright Office has since adopted formal group-registration rules for photographs. Creators should register under the current procedures while drawing comfort from the decision's protection of good-faith reliance on Office guidance. Read more: One Application, Thousands of Photographs: Alaska Stock v. Houghton Mifflin and Group Registration ›
Did the court decide that training AI on copyrighted art is infringement?
No. It decided only that the artists' allegations were plausible enough to proceed past a motion to dismiss. Whether training actually infringes (and whether fair use excuses it) remains to be litigated. Read more: Andersen v. Stability AI: The Theory That Diffusion Models Can 'Contain' the Works They Trained On ›
Why does the "model contains the work" idea matter?
Because it offers a theory of liability that does not depend on any output resembling a specific artwork. If protected images are encoded in the model's weights, the reproduction right may be implicated by the model's very existence, a question now headed for technical discovery. Read more: Andersen v. Stability AI: The Theory That Diffusion Models Can 'Contain' the Works They Trained On ›
Is this the same as the Anthropic and Meta book cases?
No. Those are separate suits over text training with their own fair-use rulings. Andersen concerns image generators and a different theory about what the trained model contains, and fair use has not yet been decided in it. Read more: Andersen v. Stability AI: The Theory That Diffusion Models Can 'Contain' the Works They Trained On ›
Why was Apple v. Franklin such an important software copyright case?
It was the first federal appellate decision to hold squarely that operating systems and machine-readable object code, including code embedded in ROM chips, are copyrightable. Before the ruling, clone makers argued that binary code was an uncopyrightable machine part or process. The Third Circuit's rejection of those arguments gave the young software industry a reliable property foundation. Read more: Apple v. Franklin: The Decision That Made Object Code Copyrightable ›
Did the decision make it illegal to build Apple-compatible computers?
No. The court held only that Franklin could not achieve compatibility by copying Apple's code verbatim. If a competitor independently writes its own operating system that runs the same application programs, copyright is no obstacle. That distinction later drove the clean-room development methods used to build lawful PC-compatible BIOS chips. Read more: Apple v. Franklin: The Decision That Made Object Code Copyrightable ›
What happened to Franklin after the Third Circuit's ruling?
The parties settled on January 4, 1984, rather than litigate the narrow merger question the panel left open. Franklin agreed to pay Apple $2.5 million and to stop selling machines carrying the copied code by April 1, 1984, and the Supreme Court dismissed Franklin's certiorari petition the same day. Apple had pushed Franklin's clones off the market entirely by 1988. Read more: Apple v. Franklin: The Decision That Made Object Code Copyrightable ›
Is Arnstein v. Porter still good law?
Its two-step structure remains the foundation of infringement analysis in every circuit, including the Ninth Circuit's extrinsic and intrinsic tests. Its separate suggestion that summary judgment should be denied whenever there is the slightest doubt about the facts has been rejected under the modern summary judgment standards of the Federal Rules. Read more: Arnstein v. Porter: The Two-Step Framework Behind Every Substantial Similarity Test ›
Why was Google Books ruled a fair use?
The Second Circuit found the copying highly transformative because it created a full-text search tool and snippet-display function that provide information about books rather than substituting for them, and it caused no meaningful market harm to authors. Read more: Authors Guild v. Google: Book Scanning and Snippets as Transformative Fair Use ›
Did displaying snippets change the fair-use result?
No. The court held that limited snippet display serves the transformative search purpose, that Google's design blocks users from reconstructing meaningful portions of a book, and that snippets are not an effective competing substitute for the originals. Read more: Authors Guild v. Google: Book Scanning and Snippets as Transformative Fair Use ›
Does Google's commercial motive defeat fair use?
No. The court held that a profit motive does not defeat fair use where the use is highly transformative; many transformative uses, including news reporting and criticism, are undertaken for profit. Read more: Authors Guild v. Google: Book Scanning and Snippets as Transformative Fair Use ›
What did HathiTrust hold about full-text search?
The Second Circuit held that digitizing books to create a full-text search database is a quintessentially transformative use, because it uses the works for the new purpose of locating information rather than reading, and does not substitute for the originals. Read more: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust: Mass Digitization for Search and Accessibility ›
How did the court treat access for the print-disabled?
The court held that providing digital copies to patrons with print disabilities is a fair use, finding no significant market that authors were losing because they had not made their works available in accessible formats at scale. Read more: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust: Mass Digitization for Search and Accessibility ›
Why is HathiTrust important for the Google Books case?
Decided a year earlier by the same circuit, HathiTrust established that full-text search is transformative and that mass digitization causes no cognizable market harm, providing the doctrinal foundation the court relied on in Authors Guild v. Google. Read more: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust: Mass Digitization for Search and Accessibility ›
Did the Court hold that Selden's book was uncopyrightable?
No. The Court did not disturb the copyright in the treatise's text and explanatory matter. It held only that the copyright did not reach the bookkeeping system or bar others from making and using account books embodying that system. Read more: The Method Belongs to the World: How Baker v. Selden Drew Copyright's First Boundary ›
Is Baker v. Selden still good law?
Yes. It has never been overruled and is treated as the foundation of the idea-expression dichotomy. Its principle is codified at 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), and courts continue to cite the opinion directly. Read more: The Method Belongs to the World: How Baker v. Selden Drew Copyright's First Boundary ›
What is the difference between the idea-expression dichotomy and the merger doctrine?
The dichotomy says ideas, systems, and methods are categorically unprotectable while expression is protectable. Merger is a corollary that withdraws protection from expression itself when an idea can be expressed in only one or a few ways, so that protecting the expression would monopolize the idea. Both trace to Baker. Read more: The Method Belongs to the World: How Baker v. Selden Drew Copyright's First Boundary ›
Why did Anthropic pay $1.5 billion if it won on fair use?
Because it won only on the use of lawfully acquired works. The separate claim (that it had downloaded and retained millions of pirated books) was not protected by fair use and was resolved by settlement before trial. Read more: Bartz v. Anthropic: Transformative Training, Unforgivable Acquisition ›
What is the practical takeaway for companies building AI?
How you obtain training data may matter more than how you use it. Lawful, documented sourcing is the central compliance obligation the decision identifies. Read more: Bartz v. Anthropic: Transformative Training, Unforgivable Acquisition ›
If Choudhury's 1979 book was copyrighted, why could others perform the Sequence?
Because copyright in a book describing a system protects the description, not the system. Under Baker v. Selden and § 102(b), the words, photographs, and drawings in Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class are protected against copying, but the sequence of postures those pages teach is an idea, process, or system that anyone remains free to practice and teach. Read more: Bikram's Yoga v. Evolation: A Sequence of Poses Is a System, Not Expression ›
Why was the Sequence not protectable as a compilation?
Because § 103 compilations must still satisfy § 102, and § 102(b) excludes ideas, processes, and systems in every case. The court held that arranging 26 poses and 2 breathing exercises does not transform an unprotectable process into protectable expression, especially where the selection and arrangement are driven by the claimed medical and functional benefits of performing them in that order. Read more: Bikram's Yoga v. Evolation: A Sequence of Poses Is a System, Not Expression ›
Did the decision hold that choreography can never be copyrighted?
No. Choreographic works have been expressly protectable under § 102(a)(4) since the 1976 Act. The court held only that the Sequence is not choreography in the copyright sense: successions of bodily movements that serve basic functional purposes, like a healing exercise regimen, are part of a process and stay outside copyright no matter how graceful they look. Read more: Bikram's Yoga v. Evolation: A Sequence of Poses Is a System, Not Expression ›
Why was copying entire Grateful Dead posters ruled fair use?
Because the purpose was transformative. Dorling Kindersley used the posters not for their original promotional and artistic purpose but as historical artifacts documenting concert events on a biographical timeline. The images were drastically reduced in size, occupied less than one-fifth of one percent of a 480-page book, and did not substitute for poster sales or for the licensing markets the archive had actually developed. Read more: Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley: When Copying Whole Works as Historical Artifacts Is Fair Use ›
Does a failed license negotiation defeat a later fair use defense?
No. The Second Circuit, following footnote 18 of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, held that a publisher's willingness to pay license fees does not establish that it may not, in the alternative, make fair use of the images. Being denied permission, or abandoning a negotiation, does not weigh against fair use. Read more: Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley: When Copying Whole Works as Historical Artifacts Is Fair Use ›
What is the difference between a traditional market and a transformative market under factor four?
Factor four protects traditional, reasonable, or likely-to-be-developed markets, such as the archive's established business of licensing full-page poster reproductions. It does not protect a claimed market for licensing the very transformative use at issue, because that reasoning is circular: every fair use involves an unpaid royalty. Copyright owners may not preempt exploitation of transformative markets. Read more: Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley: When Copying Whole Works as Historical Artifacts Is Fair Use ›
What did Bleistein v. Donaldson decide?
The Supreme Court held that pictorial advertisements (here, chromolithograph posters promoting a circus) are copyrightable, and that a work does not lose copyright protection merely because it was made for commercial or advertising purposes. Justice Holmes established that copyright's originality requirement is met by a work reflecting the author's personal expression, however modest. Read more: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing: Circus Posters, Originality, and the Anti-Discrimination Principle ›
What is the 'aesthetic non-discrimination' principle?
It is Holmes's warning that judges, trained only in law, make dangerous arbiters of artistic worth. Courts should not deny copyright based on their own assessment of a work's beauty, taste, or cultural value. This principle keeps the originality threshold low and objective, protecting commercial and avant-garde works alike. Read more: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing: Circus Posters, Originality, and the Anti-Discrimination Principle ›
How low is the originality bar after Bleistein?
Very low. Holmes wrote that a work need only contain something 'irreducible' that is one man's own, a personal reaction of an individual upon nature. This standard, later refined in Feist as requiring a minimal 'creative spark,' means the vast majority of pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works easily qualify for copyright. Read more: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing: Circus Posters, Originality, and the Anti-Discrimination Principle ›
What did Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus decide?
The Supreme Court held that the copyright owner's exclusive right to vend a book does not include the power to control the price at which a lawful purchaser resells it. A printed notice fixing a minimum retail price was not enforceable through copyright law against a retailer who bought copies and resold them for less. Read more: Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus: The Birth of the First-Sale Doctrine ›
Is Bobbs-Merrill still good law?
Its principle is. Congress codified the first-sale doctrine, first in the Copyright Act of 1909 and now in 17 U.S.C. Section 109(a), which lets the owner of a lawfully made copy sell or dispose of that copy without the copyright owner's permission. Bobbs-Merrill remains the doctrinal origin cited by later cases such as Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Read more: Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus: The Birth of the First-Sale Doctrine ›
Is it fair use to use a photo you found on Google Images?
Almost never, by itself. Brammer holds that copying a photo from the internet to illustrate a commercial website is non-transformative, commercial, and presumptively harmful to the licensing market, so the use failed every fair use factor. A search engine gives the finder no rights; contemporary photographs are presumptively copyrighted under 17 U.S.C. § 302(a) whether or not a notice appears. Read more: Brammer v. Violent Hues: The Fourth Circuit Ends the Found-It-on-Google Fair Use Defense ›
What made Violent Hues' use non-transformative?
The company used the photo precisely for its content, to show what Adams Morgan looks like, which is the same purpose the photo originally served. The court explained that contextual changes are usually transformative in two recurring situations: technological uses such as search engines, and documentary uses that accompany commentary or historical treatment. Cropping out negative space and calling the use informational fit neither category, and a difference in purpose is not the same thing as transformation. Read more: Brammer v. Violent Hues: The Fourth Circuit Ends the Found-It-on-Google Fair Use Defense ›
Does good faith matter to fair use after Brammer?
Bad faith can weigh against a defendant, but Brammer holds that good faith does essentially nothing to help one. Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense, and because fair use presupposes good faith, most courts ask only whether bad faith cuts against the user. Violent Hues' owner believed the photo was freely available, but the court called that belief negligent at best, since the Flickr page displayed an all-rights-reserved notice. Read more: Brammer v. Violent Hues: The Fourth Circuit Ends the Found-It-on-Google Fair Use Defense ›
What is the difference between sampling a composition and sampling a sound recording?
A composition is the underlying music and lyrics; a sound recording is the specific captured performance. Replaying a melody yourself implicates only the composition. Copying the actual master (as in Bridgeport) implicates the sound recording, which the Sixth Circuit treated under its own bright-line rule. Read more: "Get a License or Do Not Sample": Bridgeport's Bright Line for Sound Recordings ›
Did Bridgeport really make a two-second sample illegal?
For sound recordings in the Sixth Circuit, yes. The court held that the amount taken is irrelevant, so even a brief, manipulated fragment can infringe absent a license or a successful fair use defense. Read more: "Get a License or Do Not Sample": Bridgeport's Bright Line for Sound Recordings ›
Is Bridgeport still good law everywhere?
No. It remains binding in the Sixth Circuit, but the Ninth Circuit expressly declined to follow it in VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone (2016), holding that the de minimis defense applies to sound recordings and creating an open circuit split. Read more: "Get a License or Do Not Sample": Bridgeport's Bright Line for Sound Recordings ›
Did George Harrison deliberately copy He's So Fine?
No. Judge Owen expressly found that Harrison did not deliberately use the earlier song. The court nonetheless held that My Sweet Lord infringed because Harrison had access to He's So Fine and the two songs were substantially similar, and copyright infringement does not require intent. The copying was, in the court's words, no less infringement even though subconsciously accomplished. Read more: Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs: Subconscious Copying Is Still Infringement ›
What did Harrison ultimately have to pay?
In the 1981 damages phase, the court valued the infringement at $1,599,987 of My Sweet Lord's earnings. But because Harrison's former manager Allen Klein had breached his fiduciary duty by secretly buying Bright Tunes' rights mid-litigation, the court imposed a constructive trust and limited Harrison's obligation to $587,000 plus interest, the price ABKCO had paid for the copyright and the claim, in exchange for the rights to He's So Fine. The Second Circuit affirmed the infringement and fiduciary-breach findings in 1983, modifying the scope of the trust and remanding on that point. Read more: Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs: Subconscious Copying Is Still Infringement ›
Is subconscious copying still good law?
Yes. The Ninth Circuit endorsed it in Three Boys Music Corp. v. Bolton in 2000, affirming a verdict against Michael Bolton over a song he plausibly had not consciously thought about for decades, and the access-plus-similarity framework Bright Tunes applied remains the backbone of every modern song-similarity trial. Read more: Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs: Subconscious Copying Is Still Infringement ›
What did Burrow-Giles v. Sarony decide?
The Supreme Court held that photographs can be constitutional writings of an author and therefore eligible for copyright, upholding the statute that extended copyright to photographs. Sarony's portrait of Oscar Wilde reflected his original intellectual conception, so he was its author. Read more: The Camera Has an Author: Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony ›
Why did the lithographic company argue photographs could not be copyrighted?
Burrow-Giles argued a photograph is merely a mechanical reproduction of reality, not the writing of an author, so Congress had no constitutional power to grant it copyright. The Court rejected that view where the photograph embodies the photographer's original creative choices. Read more: The Camera Has an Author: Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony ›
Does Burrow-Giles mean every photograph is copyrightable?
Not necessarily. The Court rested its holding on the originality reflected in Sarony's posing, lighting, and arrangement. It left open whether a purely mechanical photograph with no creative authorship would qualify, a distinction that still matters today. Read more: The Camera Has an Author: Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony ›
Did 2 Live Crew win outright at the Supreme Court?
Not entirely. The Court reversed the Sixth Circuit and held that the parody could be fair use, but it remanded for further consideration of the third and fourth factors, including the potential market for a non-parody rap derivative. The case settled afterward. Read more: Parody Earns Its Keep: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose and the Birth of Transformative Fair Use ›
What is the difference between parody and satire in fair-use law?
Parody targets and comments on the original work itself, so it has a strong justification for copying that work. Satire borrows a work to comment on something else and therefore has a weaker claim, because it could often make its point without taking the specific original. Read more: Parody Earns Its Keep: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose and the Birth of Transformative Fair Use ›
Why is Campbell still cited so heavily?
It made "transformative use" the centerpiece of the first fair-use factor and rejected rigid presumptions, shaping how courts analyze everything from appropriation art to news commentary in the decades since. Read more: Parody Earns Its Keep: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose and the Birth of Transformative Fair Use ›
Why can I resell a used CD but not a downloaded song?
Reselling a CD transfers the same physical object, implicating only the distribution right, which first sale limits. Transferring a digital file makes a new copy, implicating the reproduction right, which has no first-sale exception. Read more: Capitol Records v. ReDigi: Why You Cannot Resell a Song the Way You Resell a Record ›
Didn't ReDigi delete the original as it copied?
Yes, but the court held that the reproduction right is triggered by the creation of the new copy regardless of whether the source is deleted. Deleting the original does not undo the fact that a new phonorecord was made. Read more: Capitol Records v. ReDigi: Why You Cannot Resell a Song the Way You Resell a Record ›
Could Congress create a digital first-sale right?
It could. The court treated digital exhaustion as a policy choice for the legislature, saying that if ReDigi and its supporters have persuasive arguments for the change of law they advocate, it is Congress they should persuade. Until Congress acts, ReDigi controls in the Second Circuit. Read more: Capitol Records v. ReDigi: Why You Cannot Resell a Song the Way You Resell a Record ›
Did Richard Prince win the case?
Largely. The Second Circuit held twenty-five of his thirty works were fair use as a matter of law and vacated the injunction that would have let Cariou destroy them, remanding only five for further analysis. The parties settled in 2014 before the remaining works were finally adjudicated. Read more: When the Eye Decides: Cariou v. Prince and Fair Use for Appropriation Art ›
Does Cariou still control after Warhol v. Goldsmith?
Its core holding that commentary is not strictly required survives, but the 2023 Warhol decision sharpened the first-factor analysis to emphasize the use's purpose and any commercial substitution, tempering Cariou's emphasis on a merely "different aesthetic." Read more: When the Eye Decides: Cariou v. Prince and Fair Use for Appropriation Art ›
Can any artist freely reuse a photograph if they change the style?
No. A new style or aesthetic helps, but courts also weigh how much was taken, whether the original remains recognizable, and whether the new work competes in the same market. Modest changes that preserve the original's expression can still infringe. Read more: When the Eye Decides: Cariou v. Prince and Fair Use for Appropriation Art ›
What is the volitional-conduct requirement?
To be a direct infringer of the reproduction right, a party must engage in volitional conduct that actually causes the copy to be made. In the remote DVR context, the court held that the subscriber who presses record supplies that volition, so the cable operator that built and ran the automated system is not the direct copier. Read more: Who Presses Record? Cartoon Network v. Cablevision and the Volitional-Conduct Rule ›
Why weren't the buffer copies infringing?
The Copyright Act protects works fixed for more than a transitory duration. Data passed through Cablevision's buffers for at most about 1.2 seconds before being overwritten, which the court held was too fleeting to be fixed, so no actionable copy was made. Read more: Who Presses Record? Cartoon Network v. Cablevision and the Volitional-Conduct Rule ›
Did this case decide whether remote DVRs are fair use?
No. The plaintiffs pleaded only direct infringement, not contributory infringement, and Cablevision waived any defense based on fair use, so both issues were off the table. The court decided only who made the copies and whether the playbacks were public performances, and the Supreme Court later declined to hear the case. Read more: Who Presses Record? Cartoon Network v. Cablevision and the Volitional-Conduct Rule ›
Did the artists own the buildings or the right to keep their murals forever?
No. The artists did not own the buildings, and the works were understood to be impermanent. The court's point was narrower: while the works existed and qualified as recognized stature, VARA required the owner to follow statutory procedures (notice and an opportunity to salvage, or a signed waiver) rather than destroy them willfully overnight. Read more: Whitewashed Overnight: Castillo v. G&M Realty and VARA's Protection for Art of 'Recognized Stature' ›
Why was the award the statutory maximum?
Because the destruction was found willful. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), willful infringement permits up to $150,000 per work. With forty-five qualifying works, the maximum totaled $6.75 million, which the Second Circuit affirmed in light of the developer's bad faith and the need for deterrence. Read more: Whitewashed Overnight: Castillo v. G&M Realty and VARA's Protection for Art of 'Recognized Stature' ›
Are details from a fictional TV show copyrightable facts?
No. Under Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., facts are free for anyone to use because no one authored them. But events that exist only in a script were authored, so Castle Rock treats them as protected creative expression. A question asking what Kramer did in a given episode is really asking about dialogue and plot the show's writers invented, and copying enough of those invented details is copying the work itself. Read more: Castle Rock v. Carol Publishing: Seinfeld Trivia, Fictional Facts, and the Derivative Markets a Copyright Owner Never Entered ›
Why did the Seinfeld Aptitude Test fail the fair use test?
The Second Circuit found any transformative purpose slight to non-existent because the book did not comment on or analyze the show; it repackaged Seinfeld to entertain the same audience. With a creative work copied 643 times for a non-critical purpose, the first three statutory factors favored Castle Rock, and the court held the book substituted for a derivative market the copyright owner would in general develop or license. Read more: Castle Rock v. Carol Publishing: Seinfeld Trivia, Fictional Facts, and the Derivative Markets a Copyright Owner Never Entered ›
What does Castle Rock mean for unlicensed trivia books and fan guides today?
It does not outlaw the genre, but it draws the line at repackaging. A companion work built on genuine criticism, scholarship, parody, or commentary about a series can still claim fair use, while one whose real value is delivering the show's own creative content to fans needs a license. The safest unlicensed works add their own analysis and take only what that analysis requires. Read more: Castle Rock v. Carol Publishing: Seinfeld Trivia, Fictional Facts, and the Derivative Markets a Copyright Owner Never Entered ›
Did CCNV lose all rights to the sculpture?
No. The Court held only that Reid was not an employee, so the work was not made for hire. The case went back to the District Court to decide whether CCNV and Reid were joint authors, in which case both would co-own the copyright with the rights co-owners share. Read more: Who Owns the Statue? CCNV v. Reid and the Birth of the Agency Test ›
Does a signed contract calling something "work for hire" settle the question?
Not by itself. For the nine enumerated categories, a signed agreement is required and effective. For everything else, the label is irrelevant unless the creator is an employee under the agency test, which is why a separate assignment clause matters. Read more: Who Owns the Statue? CCNV v. Reid and the Birth of the Agency Test ›
Is the Reid test still good law?
Yes. It remains the controlling standard for distinguishing employees from independent contractors under the Copyright Act and is applied routinely across creative industries. Read more: Who Owns the Statue? CCNV v. Reid and the Birth of the Agency Test ›
What is the "infringement nexus" requirement?
It is the rule, announced in this case, that a § 1201(a)(2) plaintiff must show a reasonable relationship between the circumvention enabled by the defendant's product and an infringement of a right protected by the Copyright Act. Circumvention that facilitates only authorized, non-infringing use is not actionable. Read more: The Garage-Door Case That Tethered the DMCA to Infringement: Chamberlain v. Skylink ›
Is Chamberlain still good law?
It remains binding precedent in the Federal Circuit and is widely cited nationwide. But the Ninth Circuit declined to adopt its nexus requirement in MDY v. Blizzard, so the two approaches coexist, and the Supreme Court has not chosen between them. Read more: The Garage-Door Case That Tethered the DMCA to Infringement: Chamberlain v. Skylink ›
What does it take to be a joint author under Childress v. Taylor?
Each putative author must make an independently copyrightable contribution, and both must intend, at the time of creation, that their contributions merge into a unitary whole as co-authors. Supplying ideas, direction, or research is not enough without that mutual intent to share authorship. Read more: Two Hands, One Author: Childress v. Taylor and the Intent Test for Joint Authorship ›
Why did Clarice Taylor lose her co-authorship claim?
The court found no shared intent to be co-authors. Taylor conceived the play about Moms Mabley and supplied research and ideas, but Alice Childress wrote the script and never regarded Taylor as a co-author. Absent that mutual intent, Taylor's contributions did not make her a joint author. Read more: Two Hands, One Author: Childress v. Taylor and the Intent Test for Joint Authorship ›
Does the intent test mean ideas and research never count?
Contributions of ideas and research can be valuable and may support other claims, but under Childress they do not by themselves confer joint authorship. Copyright protects expression, and joint authorship additionally requires that both parties intended to be co-authors of the unified work. Read more: Two Hands, One Author: Childress v. Taylor and the Intent Test for Joint Authorship ›
What did Classic Media v. Mewborn decide?
The Ninth Circuit held that Winifred Knight Mewborn's 1978 re-grant of Lassie rights did not extinguish her statutory right under Section 304(c) to terminate her earlier 1976 assignment. Her later termination notice was valid, and her 25 percent share of the movie, television, and radio rights reverted to her as of May 1, 1998. Read more: Classic Media v. Mewborn: When a Later Re-Grant Cannot Kill a Termination Right ›
How is Mewborn different from the Steinbeck case?
In Steinbeck the Second Circuit found a renegotiation that expressly canceled and superseded the pre-1978 grant, leaving nothing to terminate. In Mewborn the Ninth Circuit found that a later assignment did not replace the original grant in a way that gave up the termination right, so the right survived. The cases mark a doctrinal tension. Read more: Classic Media v. Mewborn: When a Later Re-Grant Cannot Kill a Termination Right ›
Why did the court call the 1978 assignment a 'nullity' as to certain rights?
Because Mewborn had already assigned the motion picture, television, and radio rights in 1976. The court reasoned she had nothing left to convey again in 1978 as to those rights, so that part of the 1978 assignment transferred nothing and could not be treated as a new grant that waived her termination right. Read more: Classic Media v. Mewborn: When a Later Re-Grant Cannot Kill a Termination Right ›
Did Altai escape liability entirely?
No. The court affirmed that OSCAR 3.4, which contained roughly thirty percent literally copied ADAPTER code, infringed. Only the clean-room rewrite, OSCAR 3.5, was held non-infringing. Read more: Filtering the Code: How Computer Associates v. Altai Brought the Idea-Expression Line to Software ›
What is abstraction-filtration-comparison?
It is a three-step test for nonliteral software infringement: break the program into levels of abstraction; filter out elements dictated by efficiency, by external factors, and by the public domain; then compare only the remaining protectable expression to the accused program. Read more: Filtering the Code: How Computer Associates v. Altai Brought the Idea-Expression Line to Software ›
How does Altai connect to Baker v. Selden and Nichols?
It applies the same idea-expression principle to code. The abstraction step adapts Learned Hand's Nichols ladder; the efficiency filter embodies the merger doctrine traceable to Baker; and the external-factors filter is the software version of scènes à faire. Read more: Filtering the Code: How Computer Associates v. Altai Brought the Idea-Expression Line to Software ›
Did the court decide that training Claude on song lyrics is legal?
No. It denied a preliminary injunction, ruling only that the publishers had not met the demanding standard for emergency relief. The underlying infringement and fair-use questions remain to be litigated. Read more: Concord Music v. Anthropic: Why the Music Publishers Lost Their Bid to Halt AI Training ›
Is this the same as the Anthropic books case?
No. This is a separate suit brought by music publishers over song lyrics. The well-known Anthropic fair-use ruling concerned books and a different record; lyrics present distinct fair-use considerations. Read more: Concord Music v. Anthropic: Why the Music Publishers Lost Their Bid to Halt AI Training ›
What are the "guardrails" the parties agreed to?
Technical measures Anthropic implemented to prevent Claude from reproducing the plaintiffs' copyrighted lyrics in its outputs. Under the January 2025 stipulation, Anthropic agreed to maintain them on current models and apply comparable measures to future ones. Read more: Concord Music v. Anthropic: Why the Music Publishers Lost Their Bid to Halt AI Training ›
Did the Supreme Court eliminate the DMCA repeat-infringer policy requirement?
No. Section 512(i)'s requirement that providers reasonably implement a repeat-infringer termination policy remains intact. The Court changed the consequences of losing the safe harbor: forfeiture returns a defendant to ordinary secondary-liability principles, which now require intent rather than mere knowledge. Read more: After Cox v. Sony: The Supreme Court Rebuilds the Wall Around ISP Safe Harbors ›
What happened to the $1 billion verdict?
It is gone. The Fourth Circuit had already vacated the original award and remanded for a new damages trial; the Supreme Court then reversed the liability finding that supported any damages, because the willfulness finding depended on the now-rejected contributory-infringement theory. Read more: After Cox v. Sony: The Supreme Court Rebuilds the Wall Around ISP Safe Harbors ›
Did Disney copy The Moodsters?
The court never decided that. It dismissed the case because the Moodsters were not protectable characters and the contract claim was inadequately pleaded, so the question of copying was never reached. Read more: Lightly Sketched: Why The Moodsters Lost to Inside Out in Daniels v. Disney ›
Why are personified emotions not automatically protectable?
Because the general idea of emotions as characters is unprotectable. Copyright reaches only a specific, sufficiently delineated, distinctive expression of that idea. The Moodsters' shifting versions never achieved that. Read more: Lightly Sketched: Why The Moodsters Lost to Inside Out in Daniels v. Disney ›
What is an implied-in-fact contract claim in Hollywood?
Under Desny v. Wilder, a creator who submits an idea expecting payment if it is used may sue for breach of an implied contract. It protects the bargain, not the idea, and so survives copyright preemption, but it must be specifically pleaded. Read more: Lightly Sketched: Why The Moodsters Lost to Inside Out in Daniels v. Disney ›
Can a car really be copyrighted?
Not as a useful article in the ordinary sense, but the Batmobile was protected as a character: a recurring, distinctive, sufficiently delineated element of the Batman works. The protection runs to the character, not to functional automotive features. Read more: To the Batmobile: How DC Comics v. Towle Made a Car a Copyrightable Character ›
Does the same test apply to human characters in film and TV?
Yes. The three-part test applies to characters generally. A live-action or animated character that has consistent traits and is especially distinctive can qualify; a thinly drawn stock figure cannot. Read more: To the Batmobile: How DC Comics v. Towle Made a Car a Copyrightable Character ›
Why didn't DC lose the rights by licensing the TV and film versions?
Because licensees who create derivative works obtain rights only in their own new additions. The underlying character DC created remained DC's, and that ownership extended to the licensed incarnations that were recognizably the same character. Read more: To the Batmobile: How DC Comics v. Towle Made a Car a Copyrightable Character ›
Has any court ruled that Midjourney infringed Disney's copyrights?
No. The case was filed in June 2025 and is in discovery. The studios' complaint sets out allegations of direct and secondary infringement, but no court has decided the merits or ruled on a fair-use defense. This matter remains unsettled. Read more: Hollywood Sues the Image Machine: Disney and Universal v. Midjourney ›
Why does this case focus on outputs rather than just training?
Unlike many earlier AI suits centered on what happened during training, the studios emphasize that Midjourney's service generates images that closely depict their copyrighted characters on demand. That output-side theory aims to sidestep disputes about what a model internally contains. Read more: Hollywood Sues the Image Machine: Disney and Universal v. Midjourney ›
What does it mean that the Disney and Warner Bros. cases were consolidated?
In November 2025 the court combined the Disney and a later Warner Bros. suit against Midjourney into a single proceeding, with the Disney case as the lead. Consolidation streamlines discovery and pretrial rulings, but each studio's claims remain to be proven. Read more: Hollywood Sues the Image Machine: Disney and Universal v. Midjourney ›
Was the Star Trek mashup ever published?
No. Dr. Seuss Enterprises sued before publication. The Supreme Court denied ComicMix's petition for certiorari on June 21, 2021 (No. 20-1616), and on remand the parties settled in October 2021 on terms under which ComicMix agreed the book infringed and was permanently barred from selling it, while Seuss dropped its damages and fees claims. The work was never lawfully released. Read more: Not a Place You'll Go: Dr. Seuss v. ComicMix and the Limits of the Mashup ›
How is this different from Campbell v. Acuff-Rose?
In Campbell, 2 Live Crew's song commented on and parodied the original "Oh, Pretty Woman," earning parody's latitude. Boldly did not comment on Oh, the Places You'll Go!; it used Seuss's expression to tell an unrelated Star Trek story, so the parody justification was unavailable. Read more: Not a Place You'll Go: Dr. Seuss v. ComicMix and the Limits of the Mashup ›
Can a stock photo agency sue infringers on a photographer's behalf?
Only if it holds an exclusive right under the copyright or is a beneficial owner of one. A nonexclusive licensing agent cannot sue, and it cannot fix that by taking an assignment of the right to sue while the photographer keeps the copyright. Read more: Who Gets to Sue: DRK Photo v. McGraw-Hill and the Limits of Assigning a Copyright Claim ›
What is the difference between an exclusive and a nonexclusive license?
An exclusive license transfers ownership of one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights and makes the holder a co-owner who can sue. A nonexclusive license is mere permission to use the work and confers no ownership and no standing to sue under Section 501(b). Read more: Who Gets to Sue: DRK Photo v. McGraw-Hill and the Limits of Assigning a Copyright Claim ›
Why couldn't DRK just buy the right to sue?
Because Section 501(b) ties standing to ownership of an exclusive right. The court read the Copyright Act, following Silvers v. Sony, to bar assignment of a bare accrued claim divorced from any ownership interest, so DRK's paperwork transferred only a right to sue, which is not enough. Read more: Who Gets to Sue: DRK Photo v. McGraw-Hill and the Limits of Assigning a Copyright Claim ›
Did Effects Associates lose all rights to its footage?
No. Because the implied license was nonexclusive, Effects still owned the copyright, remained free to license the footage to others, and could sue Cohen in state court for breach of contract to recover the unpaid balance. It simply could not recast its payment dispute as federal copyright infringement. Read more: Effects Associates v. Cohen: Moviemakers Do Lunch, Not Contracts, and the Implied License Was Born ›
If Spotify infringed, why did Eight Mile Style lose?
Because the court applied equitable estoppel. The publisher knew Spotify was streaming its compositions for years, allowed an apparent licensing arrangement to continue, and (in the court's view) delayed suing to maximize damages. Spotify reasonably relied on that conduct, so the claim was barred despite the underlying infringement. Read more: Infringement Without a Remedy: Eight Mile Style v. Spotify and the Estoppel Trap ›
What role did the Harry Fox Agency and Kobalt play?
Kobalt had registered the compositions with the Harry Fox Agency in its own name in 2009, even though administration rights belonged to Bridgeport Music. No one corrected the error, so when Spotify licensed through Kobalt it believed in good faith that the Eminem works were covered. That confusion was central to the court's reliance finding. Read more: Infringement Without a Remedy: Eight Mile Style v. Spotify and the Estoppel Trap ›
Did the case decide whether the Music Modernization Act's liability limit is constitutional?
No. The court declined to reach the constitutional challenge, leaving that question "for a future case involving an appropriate plaintiff." The MMA's limitation-of-liability provision remains in force and untested on the merits in this litigation. Read more: Infringement Without a Remedy: Eight Mile Style v. Spotify and the Estoppel Trap ›
What did Eldred v. Ashcroft decide?
The Supreme Court upheld the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which added 20 years to the term of both existing and future copyrights. The Court held that extending subsisting copyrights is within Congress's power under the Copyright Clause's 'limited Times' language and does not violate the First Amendment. Read more: Eldred v. Ashcroft: The Supreme Court Upholds the 20-Year Copyright Extension ›
Why didn't the extension violate the 'limited Times' clause?
The Court reasoned that a term of life plus 70 years (or 95 years for corporate works) is still a fixed, finite period, not a perpetual one. Congress has historically extended existing terms since 1790, and the Court deferred to that long practice, holding that 'limited' constrains the duration but does not forbid Congress from enlarging a term evenhandedly for existing and future works alike. Read more: Eldred v. Ashcroft: The Supreme Court Upholds the 20-Year Copyright Extension ›
Did delivering the I Have a Dream speech put it in the public domain?
Not on the record before the Eleventh Circuit. The court held that Dr. King's public delivery, even to a live audience of some 200,000 people and a nationwide broadcast, was a performance rather than a publication, and that release to the news media for coverage of the March was only a limited publication. Under the 1909 Act, only a general publication without proper notice would have divested his common-law copyright. The court did not declare the copyright valid; it found genuine issues of material fact on other evidence and sent the case back for trial, and the parties settled in 2000. Read more: Estate of MLK v. CBS: The I Have a Dream Speech and Limited Publication ›
What is the difference between general and limited publication?
Under the 1909 Copyright Act, a general publication occurred when a work was made available to members of the public at large without regard to their identity or what they intended to do with the work, which could forfeit common-law copyright if statutory notice was missing. A limited publication communicated the work to a select group for a limited purpose, without the right of diffusion, reproduction, distribution or sale, and it did not divest common-law rights. Read more: Estate of MLK v. CBS: The I Have a Dream Speech and Limited Publication ›
How did Estate of MLK v. CBS end?
The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court's summary judgment for CBS and remanded for further proceedings, expressing no opinion on the eventual merits. Rather than continue to trial, the parties settled on July 12, 2000: CBS made an undisclosed donation to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and kept the right to use and license its own film of the speech, while agreeing to refer interested parties to the Estate. The appellate ruling on performance and limited publication stands as the case's lasting legal contribution. Read more: Estate of MLK v. CBS: The I Have a Dream Speech and Limited Publication ›
Did Feist make all telephone directories uncopyrightable?
No. It held that Rural's white pages (an undifferentiated, alphabetized list of every subscriber) lacked creativity. Directories that reflect genuine editorial selection or a creative arrangement can still qualify, though protection extends only to those original elements, not to the underlying listings. Read more: Originality Over Effort: Feist v. Rural and the Constitutional Floor for Copyright ›
What is the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, and is it dead?
It was the rule that hard work in collecting facts earned copyright against copiers. Feist squarely rejected it as inconsistent with the Copyright Clause and the 1976 Act. Effort alone cannot make facts copyrightable. Read more: Originality Over Effort: Feist v. Rural and the Constitutional Floor for Copyright ›
How much creativity is "enough" after Feist?
Very little. The Court stressed that "even a slight amount will suffice," and "the vast majority of works make the grade quite easily." The standard screens out only the wholly mechanical or inevitable (like alphabetizing names), not modest creative choices. Read more: Originality Over Effort: Feist v. Rural and the Constitutional Floor for Copyright ›
Did Feltner win the case outright?
No. The Supreme Court reversed the \$8.8 million award and remanded for a jury trial on statutory damages. The ruling concerned the process for setting damages, not whether infringement occurred. Read more: Feltner v. Columbia Pictures: The Jury's Role in Setting Statutory Damages ›
Does the jury decide only liability or also the dollar amount?
Both. The Court held the Seventh Amendment right extends to the amount of statutory damages, not just the existence of infringement. Read more: Feltner v. Columbia Pictures: The Jury's Role in Setting Statutory Damages ›
Is the jury right automatic?
It must be invoked. The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right when a party demands a jury; a party that does not properly demand one may be tried to the bench. Read more: Feltner v. Columbia Pictures: The Jury's Role in Setting Statutory Damages ›
Why did John Fogerty get sued over his own musical style?
Fantasy owned the copyright to his Creedence Clearwater Revival song 'Run Through the Jungle' and claimed his later solo song 'The Old Man Down the Road' was the same composition with new words. A jury found no infringement, so Fogerty was the prevailing defendant seeking fees. Read more: Win Like a Plaintiff, Lose Like One Too: Fogerty v. Fantasy and the Evenhanded Fee Rule ›
What factors do courts weigh when deciding Section 505 fees after Fogerty?
Courts consider nonexclusive factors such as frivolousness, the loser's motivation, objective unreasonableness in fact and law, and the need to advance compensation and deterrence. These factors apply evenhandedly to plaintiffs and defendants, as later confirmed in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley (2016). Read more: Win Like a Plaintiff, Lose Like One Too: Fogerty v. Fantasy and the Evenhanded Fee Rule ›
Do I lose damages for infringement that happened while my application was pending?
No. Once registration is made, you may recover for infringement that occurred both before and after the registration date. The decision affects when you can sue, not the period of conduct you can recover for. Read more: No Certificate, No Courthouse: Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com and the Registration Precondition to Suit ›
How can someone be a co-author of a character they didn't draw?
Joint authorship requires each contributor to add expression and to intend that their contributions merge into a unitary work. Gaiman supplied the character's name, personality, and dialogue while McFarlane drew the figure; the court held those combined contributions made Gaiman a joint owner even though he never put pen to the artwork. Read more: Words, Pictures, and Joint Ownership: Gaiman v. McFarlane and the Co-Authored Comic Character ›
Did the lawsuit run into a statute-of-limitations problem?
McFarlane argued the claim was time-barred, but the defense failed. The clock did not start until McFarlane clearly repudiated Gaiman's co-ownership, which the court located in a February 1999 letter claiming all rights to the characters. Gaiman sued in January 2002, a month inside the three-year period, and the Seventh Circuit would not disturb the jury's finding that the claim was timely. Read more: Words, Pictures, and Joint Ownership: Gaiman v. McFarlane and the Co-Authored Comic Character ›
Did the court say actors can never have any rights in their performances?
No. It held that an actor does not automatically own a separate copyright in a performance embedded in someone else's film. Performers can still acquire rights by contract and may have remedies under right-of-publicity, fraud, and related doctrines. Read more: A Performance Is Not a Work: Garcia v. Google and the Author Behind the Camera ›
What should Garcia have done instead?
The majority suggested her injuries fit other legal theories, not copyright: fraud (she was deceived about the film's nature), right of publicity, and emotional-distress claims. Copyright does not exist to remedy the misuse of a performer's likeness. Read more: A Performance Is Not a Work: Garcia v. Google and the Author Behind the Camera ›
Are the statutes themselves copyrightable?
No, and that was never in dispute. Statutory text has always been uncopyrightable. Georgia extended the same treatment to the annotations in the official code because they were authored by a legislative body acting in its legislative capacity. Read more: The Law Belongs to Everyone: Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org and the Government Edicts Doctrine ›
Why did it matter that a private contractor wrote the annotations?
It didn't change the outcome. Under the work-for-hire arrangement, the Code Revision Commission was the legal "author." Because the Commission is a legislative body, its authorship triggered the edicts doctrine regardless of who physically drafted the text. Read more: The Law Belongs to Everyone: Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org and the Government Edicts Doctrine ›
What did the English High Court decide in Getty v. Stability AI?
On November 4, 2025, the court held that Stable Diffusion is not an infringing copy for UK secondary infringement purposes, because the model does not store or reproduce Getty's images, only numerical parameters. With the training conceded to have occurred outside the UK, the copyright claims failed, leaving only limited trademark findings on watermarks. Read more: Getty v. Stability AI: Why an AI Model Is Not an Infringing Copy ›
Why did the location of training matter so much?
Getty accepted there was no evidence the training took place in the UK, so it abandoned its training claim and relied on secondary infringement based on importing the model as an infringing article. Because the alleged copying happened abroad, UK primary infringement law did not reach it, making territoriality decisive. Read more: Getty v. Stability AI: Why an AI Model Is Not an Infringing Copy ›
Did Getty win anything?
Yes, but narrowly. The court found trademark infringement it called historic and extremely limited in scope, resting on a handful of example images in which Stable Diffusion generated watermarks reproducing the iStock marks, and one reproducing a Getty Images mark. The section 10(3) claim and the broad copyright claims did not succeed. Read more: Getty v. Stability AI: Why an AI Model Is Not an Infringing Copy ›
Can Congress now take any work out of the public domain?
The Court did not endorse unlimited power, but its reasoning was not confined to the treaty setting. Golan holds that the Copyright Clause's "limited Times" language governs the length of a term, not the permanence of the public domain, leaving the outer boundary of congressional power undefined. Read more: Golan v. Holder: When Congress Pulled Foreign Works Back Out of the Public Domain ›
What happened to people who were already using the restored works?
Congress provided transitional protection for "reliance parties." They received notice and a grace period to wind down or, in the case of derivative works already created, the ability to continue exploiting them upon paying the restored owner reasonable compensation. Read more: Golan v. Holder: When Congress Pulled Foreign Works Back Out of the Public Domain ›
Did the Supreme Court decide whether software APIs can be copyrighted?
No. The Court assumed for argument's sake that the declaring code was copyrightable and decided the case on fair use, expressly declining to resolve the copyrightability question. Read more: Reusing the Interface: Google v. Oracle and Fair Use for Software APIs ›
How much code did Google copy?
Google copied roughly 11,500 lines of declaring code from the Java SE API, the lines that let programmers invoke prewritten functions by name. The Court emphasized this was a small fraction of the entire API, which runs to millions of lines. Read more: Reusing the Interface: Google v. Oracle and Fair Use for Software APIs ›
What made Google's use transformative?
The Court found Google reused the declarations to build a new and different platform, the Android smartphone environment, letting programmers apply their existing Java know-how in a new context. That further purpose, plus the limited copying, made the use transformative and fair. Read more: Reusing the Interface: Google v. Oracle and Fair Use for Software APIs ›
What did Gray v. Hudson decide about Katy Perry's Dark Horse?
The Ninth Circuit held that the eight-note ostinatos in 'Dark Horse' and the plaintiffs' 'Joyful Noise' consisted entirely of commonplace, unoriginal musical building blocks. Because those elements and their combination were not protectable, there was no copyright infringement, and the jury verdict was properly vacated. Read more: Building Blocks, Not Theft: Gray v. Hudson and Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' Ostinato ›
How much money was the original jury award, and what happened to it?
A 2019 jury awarded the plaintiffs about $2.8 million. The district court then granted judgment as a matter of law for the defendants, vacating the award, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that vacatur in 2022. Read more: Building Blocks, Not Theft: Gray v. Hudson and Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' Ostinato ›
Did the court strike down any part of the DMCA?
No. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the facial First Amendment challenge, leaving § 1201's anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions fully intact. Read more: Conduct, Not Speech: The D.C. Circuit Upholds DMCA § 1201 in Green v. DOJ ›
Why didn't the fair-use argument win?
The court treated circumvention as conduct rather than speech, so the statute was measured against the standard for laws that incidentally burden expression. It concluded that § 1201's legitimate applications vastly outweigh any potentially problematic ones, defeating the facial overbreadth claim, and that alternative channels remain available for those seeking to make fair uses. Read more: Conduct, Not Speech: The D.C. Circuit Upholds DMCA § 1201 in Green v. DOJ ›
What is the triennial exemption process, and did it survive?
Every three years the Librarian of Congress, advised by the Register of Copyrights, may grant temporary exemptions allowing circumvention for specified purposes such as security research, education, or repair. The court held this process is not an unconstitutional licensing scheme or prior restraint because it regulates conduct and lacks a direct nexus to speech. Read more: Conduct, Not Speech: The D.C. Circuit Upholds DMCA § 1201 in Green v. DOJ ›
What is controlled digital lending?
A model in which a library scans a print book it owns and lends the digital copy, purporting to keep the number of digital loans tied to the number of physical copies it holds. The Second Circuit held the practice is not fair use. Read more: Hachette v. Internet Archive: The End of 'Controlled Digital Lending' as a Fair-Use Theory ›
Did the one-to-one ratio save the Internet Archive?
No. The court found the use non-transformative and market-harming regardless of the lending ratio; the "National Emergency Library," which abandoned the ratio entirely, only sharpened the point. Read more: Hachette v. Internet Archive: The End of 'Controlled Digital Lending' as a Fair-Use Theory ›
Is the ruling final?
Yes. The Internet Archive announced in December 2024 that it would not petition the Supreme Court, so the Second Circuit's decision and injunction stand. Read more: Hachette v. Internet Archive: The End of 'Controlled Digital Lending' as a Fair-Use Theory ›
Why did The Nation lose despite quoting only about 300 words?
The Court held that the quoted material was qualitatively "the heart of the book" and that copying an unpublished work to scoop its first publication caused direct market harm, defeating fair use even though the amount taken was small. Read more: Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises: Unpublished Works and the Limits of Fair Use ›
What did Harper & Row say about the market-effect factor?
The Court called the fourth statutory factor (the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work) "undoubtedly the single most important element of fair use," a characterization later qualified but never overruled. Read more: Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises: Unpublished Works and the Limits of Fair Use ›
Does the First Amendment create a public-interest exception to copyright?
No. The Court rejected the argument that the public interest in the Nixon pardon justified the copying, explaining that copyright's idea/expression distinction and fair-use doctrine already accommodate free-speech concerns without a separate public-figure exception. Read more: Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises: Unpublished Works and the Limits of Fair Use ›
Did the Kalpakians copy Rosenthal's pin?
The district court found they did not. After an evidentiary hearing on Rosenthal's contempt motion, it credited evidence that the Kalpakians designed their pins themselves after studying bees in nature and in published works, and found the two lines not substantially similar except insofar as both look like bees. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, but it pointedly declined to rest on that finding alone. Because copying can be subconscious, Judge Browning called it unrealistic to suppose the Kalpakians had closed their minds to a highly successful pin they had access to, so he decided the case on the broader ground that the idea and its expression were inseparable. Read more: Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry v. Kalpakian: The Jeweled Bee That Built the Merger Doctrine ›
Does merger mean jewelry designs are never copyrightable?
No. Mazer v. Stein establishes that decorative three-dimensional works, including jewelry, can be copyrighted, and highly stylized or fanciful designs remain protectable. Merger applies only where the design is essentially dictated by the underlying idea, such as a lifelike rendering of a common creature, leaving little room for expressive variation. Read more: Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry v. Kalpakian: The Jeweled Bee That Built the Merger Doctrine ›
Does termination give the author back everything, including sequels and merchandise?
Not necessarily. Termination recaptures the granted U.S. rights in the original work, but the statutory derivative-works exception lets authorized pre-termination derivatives continue under the old terms, and separately authored characters may belong to others. In the Horror Inc. litigation the district court expressly declined to decide who owns the Jason character, and the Second Circuit did not reach the question. Read more: When the Author Comes Back: Horror Inc. v. Miller and the Limits of Work-for-Hire ›
Why did a signed 1979 agreement not defeat the termination?
Section 203 applies "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary," so a contractual waiver cannot bar termination. The only way to defeat it was to show the work was made for hire, which would mean there was no author grant to terminate at all. Read more: When the Author Comes Back: Horror Inc. v. Miller and the Limits of Work-for-Hire ›
Could a different writer in Miller's position lose on the same facts?
Yes. The Reid test is fact-intensive. A writer who received employee benefits, was carried on payroll with taxes withheld, worked on-site under close supervision, and was routinely assigned new projects could be found an employee, defeating any § 203 claim. Read more: When the Author Comes Back: Horror Inc. v. Miller and the Limits of Work-for-Hire ›
What is the "server test"?
It is the rule, originating in Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com (9th Cir. 2007), that a website directly infringes the public display right only if it stores a fixed copy of the image on a server it controls. A site that merely embeds (directing a browser to fetch the image from someone else's server) has not "shown a copy" and so has not displayed the work. Read more: The Server Test Survives: Hunley v. Instagram and the Public Display Right for Embedded Images ›
Did Hunley change the law?
No. It reaffirmed binding Ninth Circuit precedent. The panel held it could not overrule Perfect 10 and that Aereo did not require a different result. The significance lies in confirming the test's vitality and clarifying that it is not limited to search engines. Read more: The Server Test Survives: Hunley v. Instagram and the Public Display Right for Embedded Images ›
Is embedding now safe everywhere in the United States?
No. Hunley binds the Ninth Circuit, but courts in the Second Circuit, following Goldman v. Breitbart, have rejected the server test. The same embed may be treated differently depending on the forum until the conflict is resolved by a higher court. Read more: The Server Test Survives: Hunley v. Instagram and the Public Display Right for Embedded Images ›
Does this ruling mean OpenAI violated the DMCA?
No. A denial of a motion to dismiss only means the § 1202(b)(1) claim is plausible enough to proceed. The Intercept still must prove intentional CMI removal and the double-scienter knowledge element on a full evidentiary record. Read more: Stripping the Byline: The § 1202(b) Ruling in The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and the SDNY CMI Split ›
What is the difference between this case and Raw Story?
Both alleged OpenAI stripped CMI from news articles used to train ChatGPT. Judge McMahon dismissed Raw Story for lack of Article III standing absent dissemination of stripped copies; Judge Rakoff found The Intercept had standing and a viable § 1202(b)(1) claim, in part because it pointed to verbatim regurgitation. The two decisions conflict. Read more: Stripping the Byline: The § 1202(b) Ruling in The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and the SDNY CMI Split ›
Is this a § 1201 anti-circumvention case?
No. It is a § 1202 copyright-management-information case about removing author, title, and copyright notices. Section 1201, which bars bypassing technological protection measures, is not at issue. Read more: Stripping the Byline: The § 1202(b) Ruling in The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and the SDNY CMI Split ›
What is the central holding of Itar-Tass v. Russian Kurier?
The Second Circuit held that copyright ownership is governed by the law of the country with the most significant relationship to the work (typically its country of origin) while the question of infringement is governed by the law of the place where the allegedly infringing acts occurred, which here was the United States. Read more: Itar-Tass v. Russian Kurier: Splitting Ownership and Infringement Across Borders ›
Why didn't the Berne Convention decide the case?
The Second Circuit said national treatment is not really a conflicts rule at all and does not direct application of the law of any country. It is a nondiscrimination guarantee: if the law of the country of infringement governs the scope of protection, it must apply equally to foreign and domestic authors. Because Berne does not specify whose law decides who owns a work, the court filled that gap with U.S. federal common law and the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws. Read more: Itar-Tass v. Russian Kurier: Splitting Ownership and Infringement Across Borders ›
Why did some newspaper plaintiffs lose ground on appeal?
Under Russian copyright law as the Second Circuit construed it, newspapers held a compilation copyright in the publication as a whole but not the copyright in the text of individual articles, which belonged to the journalists absent assignment. The district court had applied Russian law too but read it differently, crediting the plaintiffs' expert; the Second Circuit found the defendants' experts more persuasive and reversed as to those plaintiffs. Read more: Itar-Tass v. Russian Kurier: Splitting Ownership and Infringement Across Borders ›
What is the difference between a license condition and a covenant?
A condition limits the scope of the copyright permission itself, so using the work outside those limits is infringement. A covenant is merely a contractual promise; breaching it gives rise only to a breach-of-contract claim, not copyright remedies like statutory damages or an injunction. Read more: Open Source Gets Teeth: Jacobsen v. Katzer and the Power of License Conditions ›
Why does Jacobsen v. Katzer matter for open-source software?
It confirmed that open-source license terms such as attribution and notice requirements can be enforceable copyright conditions. That gives developers who release code for free access to copyright remedies (including injunctions) when downstream users ignore the license terms. Read more: Open Source Gets Teeth: Jacobsen v. Katzer and the Power of License Conditions ›
Did the Federal Circuit decide that Katzer infringed?
No. It held the Artistic License terms were conditions whose violation could constitute copyright infringement and vacated the denial of a preliminary injunction, sending the case back to the district court to apply the proper standard. The parties later settled. Read more: Open Source Gets Teeth: Jacobsen v. Katzer and the Power of License Conditions ›
What is a mechanical royalty, and why does the CRB set it?
A mechanical royalty pays the songwriter and publisher for reproducing and distributing a musical composition, distinct from the public-performance and sound-recording rights. Because Section 115 makes that license compulsory, the rate is fixed by the Copyright Royalty Board rather than negotiated, so the precise formula the Board adopts governs what every interactive streaming service must pay. Read more: The 44% Raise the D.C. Circuit Sent Back: Johnson v. Copyright Royalty Board ›
Did the D.C. Circuit cut songwriters' royalties?
No. The court vacated and remanded the determination for procedural and explanatory failures under the Administrative Procedure Act; it did not rule that the rate was too high. On remand, the Board re-adopted the same 15.1% headline rate on a fuller record, but it did not restore the uncapped structure: its final determination after remand, effective August 10, 2023, returned to the Phonorecords II rate structure and capped the TCC prong. Read more: The 44% Raise the D.C. Circuit Sent Back: Johnson v. Copyright Royalty Board ›
What was the "total content cost" cap that the Board removed?
The TCC prong ties part of the royalty calculation to what a service pays for sound-recording rights. Earlier rules capped how high that prong could push the total; Phonorecords III removed that cap, a change the court found the services had not received adequate notice to contest in combination with the higher headline rate. Read more: The 44% Raise the D.C. Circuit Sent Back: Johnson v. Copyright Royalty Board ›
Did this case dismiss the authors' lawsuit?
No. It was a partial summary judgment limited to the training/fair-use and DMCA issues; other claims survive. Describing it as a dismissal of the lawsuit is imprecise. Read more: Kadrey v. Meta: A Fair-Use Win That Reads Like a Plaintiffs' Brief ›
What is the "market dilution" theory?
The argument that AI output trained on an author's work can saturate the market and depress demand for human-authored works, causing market harm under the fourth fair-use factor even without direct copying. The court called it promising but did not decide on it. Read more: Kadrey v. Meta: A Fair-Use Win That Reads Like a Plaintiffs' Brief ›
Did the Seventh Circuit hold that Wildflower Works lacked originality?
No, and the court went out of its way to correct the district court on this point. The district court had confused originality with novelty. Under Feist, the originality bar is minimal, and the panel said the garden plainly possessed more than a little creative spark. The claim failed on the distinct statutory floors of authorship and fixation, not on originality. Read more: Kelley v. Chicago Park District: Why a Living Garden Cannot Be Copyrighted ›
Does Kelley mean no living or natural artwork can ever be protected?
The opinion reasons that gardens as such are unprotectable because their form owes too much to natural forces and is inherently changeable. But the artist's plans, drawings, and photographs of the work remain fully copyrightable, and stable works that incorporate organic elements in a fixed arrangement present a different and closer question the court did not decide. Read more: Kelley v. Chicago Park District: Why a Living Garden Cannot Be Copyrighted ›
What happened to Kelley's breach of contract claim?
He won it at trial, with one dollar in nominal damages, but the Seventh Circuit reversed. Under Illinois law only the Park District's Board of Commissioners could bind the District, so an individual commissioner's assurance could not create an implied contract. The court ordered judgment for the Park District on every claim. Read more: Kelley v. Chicago Park District: Why a Living Garden Cannot Be Copyrighted ›
Did Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation reject transformative use entirely?
No. The Seventh Circuit expressed skepticism about the doctrine and declined to apply it, warning that an exclusive focus on transformativeness could override the derivative-work right in 17 U.S.C. § 106(2). But the panel still found fair use by working through the four statutory factors of § 107, resting mainly on the third and fourth factors. Read more: Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation: The Seventh Circuit's Case Against Transformative Use ›
Why did the court find fair use if it doubted transformativeness?
Because almost nothing protectable was taken and nothing was displaced in the market. The posterized image kept only a hint of the mayor's smile and the outline of his face, which the court said cannot be copyrighted, and a novelty t-shirt is not a substitute for the original inauguration photograph, so Kienitz showed no market harm. Read more: Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation: The Seventh Circuit's Case Against Transformative Use ›
How does Kienitz relate to Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith?
The Supreme Court's 2023 Warhol decision echoed Kienitz's central concern, holding that an overbroad notion of transformative use would narrow the copyright owner's exclusive right to prepare derivative works. The Supreme Court's opinion does not cite Kienitz, but the Second Circuit's decision below did, distinguishing it on the ground that Warhol's Prince silkscreen retained far more of Goldsmith's photograph than the Cheshire Cat smile left on Sconnie Nation's shirts. Read more: Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation: The Seventh Circuit's Case Against Transformative Use ›
Did Kirtsaeng get his attorneys' fees?
Not as a result of this decision. The Supreme Court vacated the denial and sent the case back to the district court to reconsider under the clarified standard; the Court did not itself order an award. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: How 'Objective Reasonableness' Anchors Copyright Fee-Shifting ›
Does a reasonable losing position guarantee no fee award?
No. Reasonableness gets substantial weight, but a court may still award fees based on other circumstances, such as litigation misconduct or a need to deter a pattern of overreaching claims. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: How 'Objective Reasonableness' Anchors Copyright Fee-Shifting ›
How does this relate to the earlier Kirtsaeng decision?
The 2013 decision resolved the merits, holding that the first-sale doctrine applies to copies lawfully made abroad. The 2016 decision concerns only the fee dispute that followed his merits victory. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: How 'Objective Reasonableness' Anchors Copyright Fee-Shifting ›
What did Kirtsaeng actually decide?
That the first-sale doctrine in § 109(a) applies to copies lawfully manufactured outside the United States. Once the copyright owner authorizes the making and first sale of a copy, it cannot use the distribution right to block that copy's later importation or resale. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: First Sale Goes Global and the Gray Market Comes Home ›
Does this mean any imported copy is fair game?
No. First sale protects copies that were lawfully made: that is, made with the copyright owner's authorization or otherwise in compliance with the Act. Pirated or otherwise unauthorized copies are not covered. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: First Sale Goes Global and the Gray Market Comes Home ›
Can companies still enforce different prices in different countries?
Not through copyright's distribution right. Many rights holders turned instead to licensing arrangements and contractual restrictions, which raise separate questions about whether the recipient is an "owner" able to invoke first sale. Read more: Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: First Sale Goes Global and the Gray Market Comes Home ›
Is Sherlock Holmes in the public domain now?
As of Klinger, the characters as drawn in the fifty public-domain works were free to use. The few stories that remained under copyright in 2014 have since entered the public domain in the United States, but the case's element-by-element method remains the controlling analysis for any character in this posture. Read more: Elementary, After All: Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate and the Public-Domain Character ›
Why does this matter for film and television?
Producers reviving classic characters must trace each trait they use to its source work. Klinger makes clear that "famous" does not mean "owned," and that careful chain-of-title mapping, not assumptions, governs what is free. Read more: Elementary, After All: Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate and the Public-Domain Character ›
Why is it so hard to win a § 512(f) case?
Because the standard is subjective. A sender is liable only if it did not genuinely believe the material was infringing. An honest but mistaken, even unreasonable, belief is not enough for liability. Read more: The Dancing Baby's Rule: Lenz v. Universal and the § 512(f) Duty to Consider Fair Use ›
Did Stephanie Lenz win damages?
The Ninth Circuit confirmed she could pursue her § 512(f) claim and recover at least nominal damages without proving monetary loss. The case settled in 2018 before a final damages determination at trial. Read more: The Dancing Baby's Rule: Lenz v. Universal and the § 512(f) Duty to Consider Fair Use ›
Did 2 Live Crew lose because their music was a work made for hire?
No. The jury found the recordings were not works made for hire, and the Eleventh Circuit assumed as much. The group lost because one member's termination interest had passed into his bankruptcy estate, leaving too few authors to meet the statutory majority. Read more: Four Authors, One Vote Short: The Eleventh Circuit, 2 Live Crew, and the Fragility of the Termination Right ›
Why did a single member's status matter so much?
The grant was made by four joint authors, and § 203(a)(1) requires a majority (here, three of four) to terminate. With Ross unable to act, only two valid signatures remained, one short of a majority. Read more: Four Authors, One Vote Short: The Eleventh Circuit, 2 Live Crew, and the Fragility of the Termination Right ›
Is the catalog permanently back with Lil' Joe Records?
Not necessarily. The court reversed and remanded but expressly declined to decide whether Ross's heirs can still exercise the interest after addressing the bankruptcy issue, leaving the door open to further litigation. Read more: Four Authors, One Vote Short: The Eleventh Circuit, 2 Live Crew, and the Fragility of the Termination Right ›
What exactly did Borland copy?
Borland copied the Lotus 1-2-3 menu command hierarchy (the words and structure of the command menus) so that its Quattro products could emulate the 1-2-3 interface. It did not copy Lotus's underlying source or object code. Read more: A Menu Is a Method: How Lotus v. Borland Put Command Hierarchies Beyond Copyright ›
Did the Supreme Court agree the menu hierarchy is uncopyrightable?
The Supreme Court did not say. It affirmed by a 4-4 split without an opinion, which left the First Circuit's ruling in place between the parties but created no national precedent and adopted no reasoning. Read more: A Menu Is a Method: How Lotus v. Borland Put Command Hierarchies Beyond Copyright ›
Is a program's command structure copyrightable today?
It depends on the jurisdiction and the specific interface. Within the First Circuit, Lotus's "method of operation" analysis controls; elsewhere, courts may apply different frameworks, and later decisions on interfaces and APIs complicate any simple answer. Read more: A Menu Is a Method: How Lotus v. Borland Put Command Hierarchies Beyond Copyright ›
What did MAI Systems v. Peak decide about RAM?
The Ninth Circuit held that loading a copyrighted program from a hard drive into a computer's random-access memory (RAM) creates a 'copy' that is sufficiently fixed to be actionable under the Copyright Act, because the representation in RAM can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated while the machine is running. Read more: MAI Systems v. Peak: When Loading Software Into RAM Became a Copy ›
Why couldn't Peak rely on the Section 117 defense?
Section 117 lets the 'owner' of a copy of a program make copies essential to using it. The court found MAI's customers were licensees, not owners, and that their licenses did not authorize a third-party maintenance company like Peak to load the software, so the defense was unavailable to Peak. Read more: MAI Systems v. Peak: When Loading Software Into RAM Became a Copy ›
Is MAI v. Peak still good law?
Its core fixation holding has been narrowed. Congress enacted 17 U.S.C. § 117(c) in 1998 to let independent service organizations load software during repair, and the Second Circuit in Cartoon Network v. CSC (2008) questioned MAI's reasoning where a copy exists only momentarily and fails the 'more than transitory duration' requirement. Read more: MAI Systems v. Peak: When Loading Software Into RAM Became a Copy ›
What are the three types of photographic originality in Mannion v. Coors?
Judge Kaplan identified originality in rendition (angle, lighting, exposure, focus, and how the image is made), timing (capturing the right moment), and composition or creation of the subject (posing, arranging, or selecting what is photographed). A photo can be original in one, two, or all three ways. Read more: What Makes a Photograph Original: Mannion v. Coors and the Rendition-Timing-Composition Test ›
Did Coors infringe Mannion's photograph?
The court did not decide that on summary judgment. Judge Kaplan denied both sides' motions, finding substantial similarity was a jury question. The case later went to trial, where a jury found for Mannion and awarded damages before the matter resolved. Read more: What Makes a Photograph Original: Mannion v. Coors and the Rendition-Timing-Composition Test ›
Why is Mannion v. Coors so widely cited?
It gave courts a practical vocabulary for analyzing photographic originality and infringement, replacing vague gestures at the idea-expression line with a structured look at rendition, timing, and composition. Courts nationwide use the framework in photo cases. Read more: What Makes a Photograph Original: Mannion v. Coors and the Rendition-Timing-Composition Test ›
Why couldn't Jack Kirby's children terminate and recapture the characters?
Because the court found the works were made for hire under the 1909 Act, Marvel (not Kirby) was the statutory author. Section 304(c) lets heirs terminate only grants the author made, and there was no author grant to terminate. Read more: Instance, Expense, and the Heirs' Lost Recapture: Marvel Characters v. Kirby ›
What is the "instance and expense" test?
It is the 1909-Act standard for work-for-hire status. A work qualifies if it was created at the hiring party's instance (its inducement and supervision) and expense (its fixed payment and assumption of financial risk). Read more: Instance, Expense, and the Heirs' Lost Recapture: Marvel Characters v. Kirby ›
Does being a freelancer protect an artist's termination rights?
Not necessarily. The court held that freelance status, working from home, and selling to multiple publishers did not defeat work-for-hire status where Marvel induced and supervised the work and paid a flat per-page rate. Read more: Instance, Expense, and the Heirs' Lost Recapture: Marvel Characters v. Kirby ›
Did the Ninth Circuit hold that LiveJournal lost the DMCA safe harbor?
No. The court held only that LiveJournal could not win the safe harbor on summary judgment. Genuine disputes of material fact about whether the ONTD moderators were LiveJournal's common-law agents required a remand for trial, where a fact finder would resolve agency and, depending on the answer, the remaining elements of the section 512(c) defense. Read more: Mavrix v. LiveJournal: When Volunteer Moderators Put the DMCA Safe Harbor at Risk ›
Does using volunteer moderators automatically make them a platform's agents?
No. Agency is a fact-specific inquiry into authority and control. The Mavrix panel pointed to evidence that LiveJournal gave moderators express screening criteria, supervised them through a paid employee who removed them based on performance, and relied on their screening as part of its business model. Volunteers who operate independently, without that direction and supervision, stand on very different footing. Read more: Mavrix v. LiveJournal: When Volunteer Moderators Put the DMCA Safe Harbor at Risk ›
What is the difference between actual knowledge and red flag knowledge under section 512(c)?
Actual knowledge is subjective: did the provider actually know of the specific infringement. Red flag knowledge is objective: was the provider aware of facts that would have made the specific infringement obvious to a reasonable person. In Mavrix, the panel instructed the fact finder to ask whether it would be objectively obvious to a reasonable person that photographs bearing a generic watermark or a Mavrixonline.com watermark were infringing. Read more: Mavrix v. LiveJournal: When Volunteer Moderators Put the DMCA Safe Harbor at Risk ›
What did Mazer v. Stein hold?
The Supreme Court held that statuettes of dancing figures were copyrightable as works of art, and that they did not lose copyright protection because they were mass-produced and used as the bases of electric lamps. A work of art incorporated into a useful article retains its copyright in its artistic features. Read more: Mazer v. Stein: Art Keeps Its Copyright Even as a Lamp Base ›
How does Mazer relate to the modern useful-articles test?
Mazer is the doctrinal ancestor of today's separability analysis. Congress codified its principle in the 1976 Act's definition of 'pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works,' which protects design features of a useful article only if they can be identified separately from, and exist independently of, the article's utilitarian aspects. That is the test the Supreme Court later refined in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands (2017). Read more: Mazer v. Stein: Art Keeps Its Copyright Even as a Lamp Base ›
Did World of Warcraft players break the law by using Glider?
Not copyright law, in the Ninth Circuit's view. Using the bot violated Blizzard's terms of use, but the court held those terms were covenants rather than conditions tied to an exclusive right, so the players breached a contract rather than infringed a copyright. Read more: Bots, Warden, and the Two Halves of § 1201: MDY Industries v. Blizzard ›
Why was MDY liable under § 1201(a) but not § 1201(b)?
Section 1201(a) protects measures that control access to a work, and Warden gated access to the game's live, server-driven elements. Section 1201(b) protects measures that guard a copyright owner's rights, such as against copying. Warden did not prevent copying, so the copy-control claim failed. Read more: Bots, Warden, and the Two Halves of § 1201: MDY Industries v. Blizzard ›
Are digital 3D models ever copyrightable after Meshwerks?
Yes. The Tenth Circuit was careful to say that digital modeling as a medium is fully capable of supporting copyright. Protection failed here because Meshwerks set out to replicate Toyota's vehicles exactly and added nothing of its own. A modeler who contributes original choices, such as invented lighting, coloring, texture, stylization, or a scene of the modeler's own design, creates protectable expression. Read more: Meshwerks v. Toyota: When a Digital Copy Is Too Faithful for Copyright ›
Why did the court analogize digital models to photographs?
Because photography is the settled body of law on copying reality. Since Burrow-Giles v. Sarony, photographs are protected for the photographer's original choices of pose, lighting, angle, and arrangement, not for mechanically capturing a subject. The court reasoned that a wireframe model that faithfully reproduces an existing car is like a mere mechanical reproduction, closer to the slavish copies denied protection in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel than to Sarony's staged portrait of Oscar Wilde. Read more: Meshwerks v. Toyota: When a Digital Copy Is Too Faithful for Copyright ›
Did Meshwerks lose everything, including its contract claim?
The copyright claim failed because the models were not original works of authorship. The contract claim was never reached: after summary judgment on the federal claim, the district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over it, and the Tenth Circuit stated in a footnote that it had not been asked to address it. So the case decided nothing about whether Meshwerks' single-use bargain was breached. Reading the outcome as a lesson that reuse must be controlled by contract is a fair inference from the case, but it is not something the court held. Read more: Meshwerks v. Toyota: When a Digital Copy Is Too Faithful for Copyright ›
What is the Grokster inducement rule?
One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties, regardless of the device's lawful uses. Read more: MGM v. Grokster: The Inducement Rule for Secondary Copyright Liability ›
Did Grokster overrule the Sony Betamax safe harbor?
No. The Court left Sony intact and did not decide whether Grokster's software had substantial noninfringing uses. It held that Sony's safe harbor does not shield a distributor who actively induces infringement, resolving the case on inducement instead. Read more: MGM v. Grokster: The Inducement Rule for Secondary Copyright Liability ›
What evidence showed unlawful intent?
The defendants aimed to capture former Napster users, marketed themselves as an infringing-download alternative, built no filtering to reduce infringement, and profited from advertising that grew with the volume of infringing use. Read more: MGM v. Grokster: The Inducement Rule for Secondary Copyright Liability ›
Why did the publisher keep collecting royalties after the heirs terminated the grant?
Because the records were derivative works made under the original grant before termination. The Court held that the exception preserves the whole pre-termination contractual structure, including the publisher's negotiated share of the royalties, not just the record companies' right to keep selling. Read more: Who Keeps the Royalties: Mills Music v. Snyder and the Derivative Works Exception to Termination ›
What is a "mechanical" royalty, and why does Section 115 matter here?
A mechanical royalty compensates the songwriter and publisher for reproducing and distributing a musical composition, distinct from the performance and sound-recording rights. Section 115 makes that license compulsory at a government-set rate, so the precise wording of the rate regulations, not private negotiation, controls what streamers must pay. Read more: When a Bundle Beats the Blanket: The MLC's Section 115 Royalty Fight With Spotify ›
Why does calling Premium a "bundle" reduce what songwriters earn?
Under 37 C.F.R. Part 385, a Bundled Subscription Offering lets a service allocate its single subscription price across the bundle's components. Attributing some revenue to audiobooks shrinks the music-attributable revenue base used to compute the royalty pool, lowering the mechanical payout, by an estimated $150 million-plus per year industry-wide. Read more: When a Bundle Beats the Blanket: The MLC's Section 115 Royalty Fight With Spotify ›
Is the case over after the January 2025 dismissal?
No. The original Section 115 claim was dismissed with prejudice, but the court later allowed the MLC one opportunity to amend, the MLC filed an amended complaint on different theories in October 2025, Spotify has moved to dismiss again, and the MLC is seeking interlocutory appellate review of the original ruling. As of July 2026, neither motion had been decided and no final judgment had been entered. Read more: When a Bundle Beats the Blanket: The MLC's Section 115 Royalty Fight With Spotify ›
What is the merger doctrine?
The merger doctrine holds that when an idea can be expressed in only one or a very small number of ways, the idea and its expression are said to merge, and copyright will not protect that expression. Protecting it would let the copyright owner monopolize the underlying idea, which copyright law forbids. Read more: When Expression Runs Out: Morrissey v. Procter & Gamble and the Merger Doctrine ›
What is the predicate-act doctrine?
It is the rule that a copyright owner may recover for foreign infringement only if an initial, completed act of copyright infringement occurred in the United States and that domestic infringement enabled or was directly linked to the foreign infringement. Read more: The Predicate-Act Doctrine Meets Mirrored Servers: Motorola Solutions v. Hytera and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad ›
Why did Motorola lose its foreign copyright damages despite winning on trade secrets?
The Copyright Act lacks an express extraterritoriality provision, so Motorola needed a domestic predicate act. Its only theory (that downloads implicated an Illinois "main server") failed because the code was mirrored abroad and there was no evidence it was actually downloaded from the U.S. server. The DTSA, by contrast, expressly reaches foreign conduct when an act in furtherance occurs in the United States, which Hytera's domestic marketing satisfied. Read more: The Predicate-Act Doctrine Meets Mirrored Servers: Motorola Solutions v. Hytera and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad ›
What practical lesson should companies take from the decision?
Where you store and replicate copyrighted data has legal consequences. Mirroring assets on foreign servers can place foreign copying beyond U.S. copyright law; rights holders should preserve forensic proof of domestic copying while also pleading trade-secret claims, which enjoy broader extraterritorial reach. Read more: The Predicate-Act Doctrine Meets Mirrored Servers: Motorola Solutions v. Hytera and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad ›
Was Murphy v. Millennium Radio the first appellate ruling on the scope of CMI?
Yes. It was the first federal court of appeals decision to define the scope of copyright management information under Section 1202. The Third Circuit rejected a narrow reading that would have confined CMI to automated systems and relied on the plain text of the statute, which contains no such limitation. Read more: Murphy v. Millennium Radio: Copyright Management Information Beyond the Digital ›
Does Murphy mean any removed photo credit creates DMCA liability?
Not automatically. Murphy holds that a printed credit can qualify as CMI, but a plaintiff must still prove the other elements of a Section 1202 claim, including the required knowledge that removal would induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal infringement. The case settled the definitional question, not every element of liability. Read more: Murphy v. Millennium Radio: Copyright Management Information Beyond the Digital ›
Did the court rule that OpenAI infringed The New York Times's copyrights?
No. It denied most of the motion to dismiss, meaning the Times's claims are plausible enough to proceed. Whether infringement occurred, and whether fair use excuses it, remains to be decided. Read more: The New York Times v. OpenAI: Why a Manhattan Judge Let the Output-Infringement Claims Stand ›
Why is this ruling considered different from the California AI cases?
Several California judges dismissed output-based and contributory theories at the pleading stage. Judge Stein allowed the contributory-infringement claim to proceed, creating a divergence that may ultimately require appellate resolution. Read more: The New York Times v. OpenAI: Why a Manhattan Judge Let the Output-Infringement Claims Stand ›
Was fair use decided?
No. Fair use is an affirmative defense unsuited to resolution on a motion to dismiss; it will be litigated on a full factual record at summary judgment or trial. Read more: The New York Times v. OpenAI: Why a Manhattan Judge Let the Output-Infringement Claims Stand ›
What did Tasini decide about freelance articles in databases?
The Supreme Court held that publishers who bought only the right to publish a freelancer's article in a print periodical could not, without further permission, license that article to electronic databases like LEXIS/NEXIS. Doing so infringed the freelancers' copyrights because the databases reproduced the articles standing alone, not as part of the original collective work. Read more: New York Times Co. v. Tasini: Freelancers Keep Their Electronic Rights ›
What is the Section 201(c) privilege?
Section 201(c) of the Copyright Act gives the owner of a collective work (such as a newspaper or magazine) a default privilege to reproduce and distribute each contributor's article "as part of that particular collective work, any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series." It is a narrow default that applies only when authors and publishers have not otherwise agreed on rights. Read more: New York Times Co. v. Tasini: Freelancers Keep Their Electronic Rights ›
Did Tasini force databases to delete the articles?
No. The Court expressly noted that remedial questions were for the lower courts and that deletion was not the inevitable outcome. Publishers and databases could negotiate licenses or blanket payments. The litigation ultimately produced a class settlement, and many publishers moved to secure electronic rights in their freelance contracts going forward. Read more: New York Times Co. v. Tasini: Freelancers Keep Their Electronic Rights ›
Why did the Beastie Boys win when they never licensed Newton's composition?
Because the Ninth Circuit held their copying of the composition was de minimis. The band had a valid license to the sound recording from ECM Records, so the only question was whether the unlicensed compositional material, a three-note sequence sung over a held C note, was substantial. Stripped of Newton's distinctive performance techniques, which belonged to the licensed recording, the court concluded an average audience would not recognize the appropriation. Read more: Newton v. Diamond: De Minimis Sampling and the Composition the Beastie Boys Never Licensed ›
Does Newton v. Diamond apply to sound recordings too?
In the Ninth Circuit, yes. Newton itself decided only a composition claim, and the Sixth Circuit's Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films refused to apply de minimis analysis to sound recordings. But in VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone in 2016, the Ninth Circuit expressly rejected Bridgeport and extended Newton's de minimis rule to sound recordings, creating a circuit split that remains unresolved as of July 2026. Read more: Newton v. Diamond: De Minimis Sampling and the Composition the Beastie Boys Never Licensed ›
Did Nichols win or lose?
She lost. The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding that The Cohens and the Kellys took only the unprotectable idea and stock characters of Abie's Irish Rose, not its protectable expression. Read more: A Series of Abstractions: Learned Hand and the Line No One Can Fix in Nichols v. Universal ›
What is the abstractions test?
It is Judge Hand's method of describing a work at successively more general levels and identifying the point at which the description becomes a mere idea. Expression below that point is protectable; everything above it is not. Hand stressed that the exact point cannot be fixed by rule. Read more: A Series of Abstractions: Learned Hand and the Line No One Can Fix in Nichols v. Universal ›
How does Nichols relate to scènes à faire?
Hand's treatment of the feuding fathers as "those stock figures, the low comedy Jew and Irishman," whose prototypes had been common property for decades, anticipated the doctrine that stock characters and situations inherent in a theme are unprotectable, which later courts formalized as scènes à faire. Read more: A Series of Abstractions: Learned Hand and the Line No One Can Fix in Nichols v. Universal ›
Did Rimini Street "win" the case?
Rimini won the most important issues on this appeal: the derivative-works findings were vacated and the portions of the permanent injunction it appealed were vacated with them. But the litigation was long-running and multi-phase, and earlier rulings established that some of Rimini's prior practices infringed. The parties settled on July 7, 2025, and the case was stayed on July 18, 2025 pending Rimini's wind-down of its Oracle PeopleSoft support business, so the appeal was the last word on the merits. Read more: Interoperability Is Not Infringement: The Ninth Circuit Rewires Derivative-Works Law in Oracle v. Rimini Street ›
What is the practical test for a software derivative work after this decision?
Look for actual incorporation of the copyrighted program's protected expression: literal code copying or non-literal copying of creative structure. Mere interoperability, compatibility, or designing software to run in another vendor's environment is not enough. Read more: Interoperability Is Not Infringement: The Ninth Circuit Rewires Derivative-Works Law in Oracle v. Rimini Street ›
Why does the case attract attention from the AI world?
Generative-AI defendants often argue their systems interact with or are informed by copyrighted works without reproducing protected expression. The Ninth Circuit's insistence on "something more" than functional connection gives those arguments a useful, recent appellate anchor, though the court did not decide any AI question. Read more: Interoperability Is Not Infringement: The Ninth Circuit Rewires Derivative-Works Law in Oracle v. Rimini Street ›
What is a "partial withdrawal," and why did publishers want one?
A partial withdrawal is an attempt to remove only certain rights (here, digital "new media" performance rights) from ASCAP while keeping the rest in the collective. Major publishers wanted to negotiate digital licenses directly with services like Pandora to command higher fees than the rate court was setting, while still relying on ASCAP for traditional outlets. Read more: All In or Not at All: Pandora v. ASCAP and the Limits of Partial Withdrawal ›
Why couldn't ASCAP simply agree to it?
Because ASCAP operates under the AFJ2 consent decree, which requires it to license its full repertory to any applicant. The Second Circuit read that obligation to mean a work is either in the repertory for everyone or out for everyone, leaving no room for ASCAP to accept rights for some users but not others. Read more: All In or Not at All: Pandora v. ASCAP and the Limits of Partial Withdrawal ›
How does a mechanical royalty differ from the performance right in this case?
A mechanical royalty covers reproducing and distributing a composition (as in downloads and interactive-stream copies). This case concerns the separate public-performance right (the right to perform a work publicly) which ASCAP and BMI license collectively and which the rate courts value under their consent decrees. Read more: All In or Not at All: Pandora v. ASCAP and the Limits of Partial Withdrawal ›
Why couldn't the Steinbeck heirs terminate under Section 304(d)?
Because the 1994 agreement expressly canceled and superseded the 1938 grant. Section 304(d) allows termination only of a grant executed before January 1, 1978. Once the 1994 deal replaced the 1938 grant, there was no surviving pre-1978 grant left to terminate. Read more: Penguin v. Steinbeck: How a Renegotiated Contract Erased a Termination Right ›
Wasn't the 1994 renegotiation an 'agreement to the contrary'?
The Second Circuit said no. Section 304(c)(5) voids agreements that contract away termination rights, but the court held that a genuine renegotiation, entered when the widow could wield the threat of termination, is a permissible exercise of the copyright owner's rights, not a prohibited waiver. Read more: Penguin v. Steinbeck: How a Renegotiated Contract Erased a Termination Right ›
What is the practical lesson for authors and heirs?
Renegotiating an old grant can be a trap. If a new contract cancels and replaces the pre-1978 grant, it can extinguish the statutory termination right that the original grant carried. Heirs should weigh whether to preserve, rather than replace, the original agreement. Read more: Penguin v. Steinbeck: How a Renegotiated Contract Erased a Termination Right ›
What is the server test from Perfect 10 v. Amazon?
The server test holds that a website operator directly infringes the public display right only if it stores a copy of the image on its own servers and transmits that copy to users. Providing HTML instructions that point a user's browser to an image hosted on a third-party server, as in-line linking and framing do, is not a display of the work by the linking site, though it may raise contributory liability questions. Read more: Perfect 10 v. Amazon: The Server Test and Transformative Thumbnails in Image Search ›
Why were Google's thumbnails fair use even though Google is a commercial company?
The Ninth Circuit held that Google's use was highly transformative because a search engine converts an image created for entertainment or aesthetic purposes into a pointer that directs users to information. The court said a search engine may be even more transformative than a parody because it puts the work to an entirely new use, and that this significant public benefit outweighed Google's incidental commercial and superseding uses, especially since harm to Perfect 10's cell-phone download market remained hypothetical. Read more: Perfect 10 v. Amazon: The Server Test and Transformative Thumbnails in Image Search ›
Is the server test still good law?
In the Ninth Circuit, yes. Hunley v. Instagram, LLC reaffirmed the server test in 2023 for embedded social media posts. But several Southern District of New York decisions, beginning with Goldman v. Breitbart in 2018, have rejected it as inconsistent with the Copyright Act's text, so as of July 2026 the rule for embedding and in-line linking still differs by forum. Read more: Perfect 10 v. Amazon: The Server Test and Transformative Thumbnails in Image Search ›
What did Perfect 10 v. CCBill hold about DMCA takedown notices?
The Ninth Circuit held that a takedown notice must substantially comply with all of Section 512(c)(3)'s requirements in a single communication before it can create knowledge of infringement. Courts may not combine several defective notices into one adequate notice, and a notice that fails the statute cannot be used to show the provider knew about the infringement. Read more: Perfect 10 v. CCBill: The Ninth Circuit's Baseline for DMCA Notices, Red Flags, and Repeat Infringers ›
What counts as red flag knowledge after CCBill?
Very little short of obvious, apparent infringement. The court held that website names like illegal.net and stolencelebritypics.com were not red flags because they could be sales puffery rather than admissions, and that hosting password-hacking instructions did not make infringement apparent without further investigation the statute does not require. Read more: Perfect 10 v. CCBill: The Ninth Circuit's Baseline for DMCA Notices, Red Flags, and Repeat Infringers ›
Why does CCBill matter for repeat infringer policies?
The decision gave the first workable definition of a reasonably implemented policy under Section 512(i): the provider needs a working notification system, a procedure for responding to compliant notices, and no active interference with copyright owners' ability to collect the information needed to complain. Imperfect record-keeping alone did not defeat the safe harbor. Read more: Perfect 10 v. CCBill: The Ninth Circuit's Baseline for DMCA Notices, Red Flags, and Repeat Infringers ›
Did Petrella win her case?
The Supreme Court did not decide the merits; it reversed the judgment against her on laches grounds and remanded so her timely claims could proceed. The ruling cleared a procedural barrier rather than declaring infringement. Read more: Petrella v. MGM: Why Laches Cannot Shorten the Copyright Damages Window ›
What did Quality King v. L'anza decide?
The Supreme Court held unanimously in 1998 that the first-sale doctrine of Section 109(a) limits the importation right of Section 602(a). Once a copyright owner authorizes the first sale of a copy, a later owner may import and resell it in the United States without the owner's permission, at least for copies made in the United States. Read more: Quality King v. L'anza: First Sale Trumps the Importation Right ›
How is Quality King different from Kirtsaeng?
Quality King involved a round trip: U.S.-made goods exported and reimported. It left open whether first sale applied to copies manufactured abroad. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley (2013) answered that open question, holding first sale applies to copies lawfully made abroad, adopting international exhaustion. Read more: Quality King v. L'anza: First Sale Trumps the Importation Right ›
Why did the court hold that "in book form" did not include ebooks?
Judge Stein read the grant language as separating the content ("the work") from the format of display ("in book form"). Because each contract separately granted rights to book club editions, reprint editions, abridgments, and Braille editions, reading "in book form" to cover every kind of book would render those clauses superfluous. Publishing industry usage confirmed that the phrase is a limited grant, traditionally understood as the right to publish a hardcover trade book. Read more: Random House v. Rosetta Books: Why a Grant of Rights 'In Book Form' Did Not Include Ebooks ›
How did the Rosetta Books case ultimately end?
The Second Circuit affirmed the denial of the preliminary injunction in a per curiam opinion on March 8, 2002, holding that the district court had not abused its discretion, without finally resolving the contract question. The case never went to trial. In November 2002 the parties settled, with Rosetta Books remaining the sole ebook publisher of the eight disputed titles and Random House separately licensing several dozen other titles to Rosetta as ebooks, sharing in the royalties on those. Read more: Random House v. Rosetta Books: Why a Grant of Rights 'In Book Form' Did Not Include Ebooks ›
Why did Raw Story lose its DMCA claim against OpenAI?
Because Judge McMahon found the publishers lacked Article III standing. Removing copyright management information like author names from articles used to train ChatGPT, without disseminating the stripped works, was too abstract an injury to be a concrete harm under the Supreme Court's TransUnion decision. Read more: Raw Story v. OpenAI: Article III Standing Halts a DMCA Training Claim ›
What is the split with The Intercept v. OpenAI?
In a parallel SDNY case, a different judge allowed a Section 1202(b)(1) CMI claim against OpenAI to proceed past dismissal, reaching a different conclusion on whether such claims can go forward. The two rulings created a district-level split on CMI standing in AI training suits. Read more: Raw Story v. OpenAI: Article III Standing Halts a DMCA Training Claim ›
Does Raw Story bar all CMI claims against AI developers?
No. It holds that CMI removal during training, without dissemination of the stripped works, does not by itself create Article III standing. A plaintiff who can show concrete downstream harm, such as reproduction of the stripped content in outputs, may still be able to establish standing. Read more: Raw Story v. OpenAI: Article III Standing Halts a DMCA Training Claim ›
Why did the characterization matter so much here?
If § 411(a) were jurisdictional, the district court would have lacked power to approve a settlement covering unregistered works, and the Second Circuit's sua sponte vacatur would have been mandatory. Treating it as a precondition let the settlement (covering both registered and unregistered claims) survive. Read more: A Precondition, Not a Jurisdictional Bar: Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick Untangles § 411(a) ›
Can a defendant waive the registration defense?
The decision strongly implies yes, because non-jurisdictional preconditions are generally subject to waiver and forfeiture. The Court did not, however, spell out every procedural consequence, leaving some details to the lower courts. Read more: A Precondition, Not a Jurisdictional Bar: Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick Untangles § 411(a) ›
What is the volitional-conduct rule from Netcom?
Direct copyright infringement requires some element of volition or causation by the defendant. A service provider whose equipment automatically and indiscriminately copies material at a user's command has not itself engaged in the volitional act of copying, so it is not directly liable, even though copyright infringement is otherwise a strict-liability tort. Read more: RTC v. Netcom: The Volitional-Conduct Rule That Shaped ISP Liability ›
Was Netcom off the hook entirely?
No. The court granted summary judgment to Netcom on direct and vicarious infringement but denied it on contributory infringement, finding a triable issue over whether Netcom, after receiving notice, knew of the infringement and materially contributed by failing to cancel the postings or the user's access. Read more: RTC v. Netcom: The Volitional-Conduct Rule That Shaped ISP Liability ›
How did Netcom influence the DMCA?
Congress pointed to Netcom as the leading judicial decision on online service-provider liability when it enacted the DMCA's Section 512 safe harbors in 1998, which codified and expanded protections for providers that act as passive conduits or respond to takedown notices. Read more: RTC v. Netcom: The Volitional-Conduct Rule That Shaped ISP Liability ›
Did Nike copy Rentmeester's photograph?
As a factual matter, the court assumed it did. Nike had access to the image, and the resemblance was strong. But factual copying alone is not infringement. The claim failed because Nike did not copy enough of the protected expression to make the works substantially similar. Read more: The Pose Belongs to No One: Rentmeester v. Nike and the Thin Copyright in a Photograph ›
Why did the Jumpman logo claim fail too?
The logo is a silhouette taken from Nike's photograph. Since that photograph was not substantially similar to the protected expression in Rentmeester's image, a silhouette derived from it could not infringe either. A bare outline of a pose is idea, not protected expression. Read more: The Pose Belongs to No One: Rentmeester v. Nike and the Thin Copyright in a Photograph ›
Have the courts decided whether training AI on sound recordings is legal?
No. Both cases were filed in June 2024 and remain in litigation. The companies deny infringement and assert fair use, and no court has issued a merits ruling on fair use. In the Suno case, an amended scheduling order entered June 30, 2026 runs fact discovery to September 30, 2026 and sets dispositive motions for April 9, 2027, so a fair-use decision is a 2027 matter at the earliest. The question is unsettled as of July 17, 2026. Read more: The Record Labels Take On AI Music: UMG and Sony v. Suno and Udio ›
Did some of these cases settle?
Yes, in part. Universal Music Group reached a settlement and licensing arrangement with Udio in October 2025 and was dismissed from that case in November 2025, and Warner Music settled with both Udio and Suno in November 2025. Sony Music continues to litigate against both companies, and Universal also remains a plaintiff in the Suno case, so live claims against both companies remain. Read more: The Record Labels Take On AI Music: UMG and Sony v. Suno and Udio ›
What exactly do the labels accuse Suno and Udio of copying?
The complaints allege the companies copied vast numbers of the labels' copyrighted sound recordings to train their models, producing outputs that imitate real recordings. Later amended complaints added allegations of stream-ripping from YouTube and related circumvention claims. Read more: The Record Labels Take On AI Music: UMG and Sony v. Suno and Udio ›
Why did Jeff Koons lose the fair use defense?
The Second Circuit rejected Koons's parody argument because a parody must comment, at least in part, on the copied work itself. Koons said he was satirizing society at large, not Art Rogers's photograph, so copying that specific image was not necessary and the use was not a protected parody. Read more: Rogers v. Koons: When Appropriation Art Is Infringement, Not Parody ›
Did it matter that Koons made a sculpture from a photograph?
No. Copyright infringement does not require copying in the same medium. The court found the sculpture substantially similar to the photograph (Koons instructed his artisans to replicate the composition, poses, and expressions faithfully), so changing dimensions and adding color did not avoid liability. Read more: Rogers v. Koons: When Appropriation Art Is Infringement, Not Parody ›
How does Rogers v. Koons compare to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose?
Rogers narrowly defined parody as commentary on the original. Two years later, the Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (1994) embraced transformative-use analysis and a more flexible view of parody, and Koons himself later prevailed on fair use in Blanch v. Koons (2006) under that transformative framework. Read more: Rogers v. Koons: When Appropriation Art Is Infringement, Not Parody ›
When can one joint author terminate alone?
When that author separately transferred only his own interest through his own grant. If two or more authors signed a single joint grant, § 203 requires a majority of the authors who executed that grant to terminate it together. Read more: One Voice Is Enough: Scorpio Music v. Willis and the Joint Author's Solo Termination ›
Can a contract override the termination right?
No. Section 203 operates "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary," so a publishing or assignment contract cannot waive or bargain away an author's statutory right to terminate within the five-year window. Read more: One Voice Is Enough: Scorpio Music v. Willis and the Joint Author's Solo Termination ›
What is the Ninth Circuit's intrinsic test that is under fire?
It is the second half of the circuit's two-part substantial similarity analysis, asking an ordinary observer whether two works share the same total concept and feel. Concurring judges criticized it as vague and possibly inconsistent with copyright's exclusion of ideas, and the en banc court may reconsider it. Read more: Ink on Trial: Sedlik v. Von Drachenberg and the Fight Over Tattoos, Photographs, and the Ninth Circuit's Similarity Test ›
Did Accolade win the case?
On the copyright claim, yes: the Ninth Circuit held that its disassembly of Sega's code to study functional requirements was fair use and reversed the infringement-based injunction. The court also viewed Sega's trademark theory skeptically because Sega's own lock-out design caused its logo to appear. Read more: Disassembly as Fair Use: Why Sega v. Accolade Still Governs Reverse Engineering ›
Why is the "nature of the work" factor so important here?
Because object code mixes protected expression with unprotected ideas and functions that cannot be examined without copying. That technical reality pushes software away from copyright's core and supports treating necessary intermediate copying as fair use. Read more: Disassembly as Fair Use: Why Sega v. Accolade Still Governs Reverse Engineering ›
Did Vizio win in December 2025?
Vizio won a narrow ruling: GPLv2/LGPLv2.1 do not require a distributor to guarantee that modified software can be reinstalled while the TV keeps working. Conservancy says that issue is peripheral to its actual demand for complete corresponding source code, and the central third-party-beneficiary question remains for trial. Read more: Can a TV Buyer Enforce the GPL? SFC v. Vizio Heads Toward a Landmark Trial ›
Why does it matter who can enforce the GPL?
Historically only copyright holders could sue. If a purchaser can enforce the license as a third-party beneficiary, enforcement rights extend to millions of downstream recipients, dramatically changing the compliance-risk calculus for any company distributing copylefted software in consumer devices. Read more: Can a TV Buyer Enforce the GPL? SFC v. Vizio Heads Toward a Landmark Trial ›
Why did the Supreme Court limit the plaintiffs to one-fifth of the film's profits?
Because the film's success owed much to elements the studio itself supplied: stars, direction, production, and marketing. The Court held that Section 25(b) of the 1909 Act compensates for the wrong rather than penalizing the infringer, so the owner could recover only the profits fairly traceable to the copied material. Read more: Sheldon v. MGM: The Supreme Court Invents Profit Apportionment ›
Why couldn't the jury hear the "Taurus" recording?
Because "Taurus" is governed by the 1909 Copyright Act, its protected work is the composition as deposited with the Copyright Office, a one-page lead sheet. The 1909 Act did not protect sound recordings, so the comparison for substantial similarity ran between "Stairway to Heaven" and the notation, not the Spirit master. Read more: Climbing Down: Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin and the End of the Inverse Ratio Rule ›
What was the "inverse ratio rule" and why did the court abolish it?
It held that stronger evidence of access to the plaintiff's work lowered the degree of similarity a plaintiff had to prove. The en banc court found the rule logically unsound and unevenly applied (access and similarity are distinct) and overruled it, especially given that in the digital age nearly every work is widely accessible. Read more: Climbing Down: Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin and the End of the Inverse Ratio Rule ›
Does Skidmore mean common musical phrases can never be protected?
Individual commonplaces (a chromatic descent, a familiar chord progression) are not protectable on their own. But an author's original selection and arrangement of such elements can be. The en banc court declined to impose a separate "virtual identity" test on such claims, holding that the standard is always substantial similarity, and it noted that a selection and arrangement copyright is not always "thin." Where the range of protectable expression is narrow, however, the works must be that much closer before the similarity counts as substantial. Read more: Climbing Down: Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin and the End of the Inverse Ratio Rule ›
Are tattoos copyrightable?
Yes. An original pictorial design fixed on skin can satisfy copyright's originality and fixation requirements. Solid Oak did not question that tattoos can be protected; it held that this particular use of protected designs was nonetheless lawful. Read more: Ink on Screen: Solid Oak Sketches v. 2K Games and the Copyright Status of Tattoos in Video Games ›
Does this mean a video game can always copy a player's tattoos?
No. The court relied on three context-specific grounds: the tattoos were tiny and indistinct in the game, the artists had impliedly licensed the players to display them, and the use was fair. A more prominent or differently structured use could change the outcome. Read more: Ink on Screen: Solid Oak Sketches v. 2K Games and the Copyright Status of Tattoos in Video Games ›
Who controls a tattoo once it is on someone's body, the artist or the client?
The artist generally holds the copyright, but by inking a client the artist is typically found to grant an implied license allowing the client to display the tattoo as part of their own appearance. Express written agreements can override that default. Read more: Ink on Screen: Solid Oak Sketches v. 2K Games and the Copyright Status of Tattoos in Video Games ›
What did Sony v. Connectix hold about reverse engineering?
The Ninth Circuit held that the intermediate copies Connectix made while disassembling Sony's copyrighted PlayStation BIOS to reverse engineer it were protected fair use, because copying was necessary to access the unprotected functional elements of the software and to create a new, non-infringing product. Read more: Sony v. Connectix: Reverse Engineering as Fair Use ›
Did the final emulator contain Sony's copyrighted code?
No. The Virtual Game Station shipped with Connectix's own BIOS code, not Sony's. The copyright dispute concerned only the temporary, intermediate copies of Sony's firmware that Connectix made and discarded during development, which the court treated as a fair use. Read more: Sony v. Connectix: Reverse Engineering as Fair Use ›
How does Sony v. Connectix relate to Sega v. Accolade?
It follows and extends Sega Enterprises v. Accolade (9th Cir. 1992), which first held that intermediate copying to reverse engineer software for interoperability can be fair use. Connectix applied that framework and rejected Sony's argument that a cleaner, less copying-intensive method was required. Read more: Sony v. Connectix: Reverse Engineering as Fair Use ›
What did the Supreme Court actually decide in the Betamax case?
It decided two things: that private, noncommercial time-shifting (recording a broadcast program to watch it once at a more convenient time) is fair use, and that Sony was not contributorily liable for selling VCRs because the machines were capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Read more: The Betamax Bargain: Sony v. Universal and the Right to Record at Home ›
What is the staple-article-of-commerce rule?
Borrowed from patent law, it shields the sale of a product from contributory-infringement liability if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes; that is, if it is merely capable of substantial noninfringing uses. The Court applied that standard to the VCR. Read more: The Betamax Bargain: Sony v. Universal and the Right to Record at Home ›
How close was the decision?
Very close. The Court ruled 5 to 4, with Justice Stevens writing for the majority and Justice Blackmun writing a vigorous dissent. The case was argued twice before the Court reached its decision in January 1984. Read more: The Betamax Bargain: Sony v. Universal and the Right to Record at Home ›
Why was Telewizja Polska the infringer rather than the U.S. viewers?
The court held that TV Polska itself performed the works by operating the video-on-demand system, controlling its content, and removing the geoblocking that had prevented U.S. access. Nothing in the Act, the court reasoned, says a work is performed only if the end user plays no role in the showing, and under Aereo a viewer's click does not relieve the broadcaster. The court expressly declined to decide whether the Copyright Act contains a volitional-conduct requirement at all, holding that TV Polska's conduct infringed whatever the scope of any such requirement. Read more: Spanski v. Telewizja Polska: A Foreign Broadcaster's Stream Lands Inside U.S. Copyright ›
How were the damages calculated?
The district court awarded statutory damages of $60,000 for each of the fifty-one infringed episodes, for a total of $3,060,000, after finding the infringement willful. The D.C. Circuit reviewed the willfulness finding for clear error and the award for abuse of discretion, and affirmed both. Read more: Spanski v. Telewizja Polska: A Foreign Broadcaster's Stream Lands Inside U.S. Copyright ›
Did Star Athletica make clothing designs copyrightable?
Only in part. It made separable surface designs (the graphics applied to a garment) eligible for copyright. The garment's shape, cut, and function remain unprotectable useful-article features. Read more: Designs on a Uniform: Star Athletica and the New Test for Separability ›
What is the two-part test?
A design feature on a useful article is eligible for copyright if it (1) can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate from the article, and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work if imagined apart from the article. Both steps must be met. Read more: Designs on a Uniform: Star Athletica and the New Test for Separability ›
Did the Court decide whether Varsity's designs were original or infringed?
No. The Court resolved only eligibility under § 101. Whether the designs satisfy Feist's originality threshold and whether Star Athletica infringed were left for further proceedings. Read more: Designs on a Uniform: Star Athletica and the New Test for Separability ›
What is the double scienter requirement under Section 1202(b)?
It is the rule that a plaintiff must prove two mental states. First, the defendant knew copyright management information was removed or altered without authority. Second, the defendant knew or had reasonable grounds to know that the removal would induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement. Proof of removal alone is not enough. The phrase 'double scienter' comes from the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Victor Elias Photography, LLC v. Ice Portal, Inc. (2022); Stevens v. CoreLogic established the second requirement in the Ninth Circuit without using that label. Read more: Stevens v. CoreLogic: The Double Scienter Rule for Stripped Metadata ›
Did stripping EXIF metadata violate the DMCA in Stevens v. CoreLogic?
No. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for CoreLogic. The photographers showed that CoreLogic's software removed metadata when it downsampled images, but they offered no evidence that CoreLogic knew this removal would likely cause or hide infringement, so the second scienter element failed. Read more: Stevens v. CoreLogic: The Double Scienter Rule for Stripped Metadata ›
Why does Stevens v. CoreLogic matter for AI training-data lawsuits?
Many recent suits allege that AI developers stripped copyright management information from images and text used to train models. Stevens v. CoreLogic is the controlling Ninth Circuit authority holding that plaintiffs must plead and prove the defendant's knowledge that removal would likely induce or conceal infringement, which has become a central pleading battleground as of July 2026. Read more: Stevens v. CoreLogic: The Double Scienter Rule for Stripped Metadata ›
What was the core holding of Stewart v. Abend?
When an author assigns renewal-term rights in a work and dies before the renewal term begins, the assignee's expectancy fails, and the renewal copyright vests in the statutory successors named in the Copyright Act. Those successors are not bound by the deceased author's promise, so continued distribution of a derivative work made under the original grant infringes the renewal copyright unless the successors consent. Read more: Stewart v. Abend: Renewal Rights Trump a Dead Author's Derivative-Work Grant ›
How does this affect derivative works like films and adaptations?
A derivative work is separately copyrightable, but it can only be exploited with authority to use the underlying work. If the license to the underlying work rested on an author's renewal-term grant that lapsed at his death, the derivative work's owner loses the right to distribute it during the renewal term without a new license from the underlying work's renewal owner. Read more: Stewart v. Abend: Renewal Rights Trump a Dead Author's Derivative-Work Grant ›
Is this the same case as the Ed Sheeran jury trial?
No. A separate, highly publicized case also cleared Sheeran. This appeal involved a different plaintiff, Structured Asset Sales, which holds a fractional royalty interest in the song. Read more: Structured Asset Sales v. Sheeran: The Deposit Copy and the Limits of Owning a Groove ›
What is a "deposit copy"?
For songs copyrighted under the pre-1978 (1909 Act) regime, it is the sheet music filed with the Copyright Office, which defines the scope of the composition copyright, meaning the sound recording's distinctive feel is not part of the protected work. Read more: Structured Asset Sales v. Sheeran: The Deposit Copy and the Limits of Owning a Groove ›
What case did Subafilms overrule?
It overruled Peter Starr Production Co. v. Twin Continental Films insofar as that decision held that domestic authorization of wholly extraterritorial infringement was actionable under U.S. copyright law. Read more: Yellow Submarine, Hard Borders: Subafilms v. MGM-Pathe and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad ›
Can a rightsholder ever reach foreign infringement?
Generally not under the U.S. Copyright Act for conduct occurring entirely abroad. The usual remedy is to sue under the copyright laws of the countries where the infringement occurs, often relying on international conventions like the Berne Convention. Read more: Yellow Submarine, Hard Borders: Subafilms v. MGM-Pathe and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad ›
Why did the Eleventh Circuit treat The Wind Done Gone as a parody?
Following Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, the court defined parody as a work that appropriates elements of an original to comment on or criticize it. The Wind Done Gone qualified because it borrowed the characters, settings, and plot of Gone With the Wind specifically to attack the earlier novel's romanticized depiction of slavery and race relations in the antebellum South, retelling the story through the eyes of an enslaved narrator. Read more: Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin: The Wind Done Gone, Parody, and Prior Restraint ›
What did the court say about the injunction and the First Amendment?
The court held that issuing the preliminary injunction was at odds with the shared principles of the First Amendment and the copyright law, acting as a prior restraint on speech because the public had not had access to Randall's ideas or viewpoint in the form of expression she chose. It also stressed that irreparable injury cannot be presumed when the defendant raises a bona fide fair use defense, and that money damages would be an adequate remedy. Read more: Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin: The Wind Done Gone, Parody, and Prior Restraint ›
How did the case ultimately end?
After the Eleventh Circuit vacated the injunction and remanded, the parties settled in May 2002. Houghton Mifflin continued publishing the novel labeled as an unauthorized parody and, at the Mitchell estate's request, made a financial contribution to Morehouse College in Atlanta, while both sides maintained the correctness of their legal positions. Read more: Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin: The Wind Done Gone, Parody, and Prior Restraint ›
Does Tangle hold that the sculptures are definitively protected?
No. The court held only that Tangle plausibly alleged protectable expression and substantial similarity. Validity, scope, and infringement remain to be decided on a full record. Read more: Where Ideas End and Expression Begins: The Ninth Circuit Revives Tangle's Sculpture Suit Against Aritzia ›
How does the case relate to the merger doctrine?
Indirectly but importantly. The panel found the arrangement protectable precisely because the elements could be combined in many ways: the inverse of merger, which denies protection when an idea admits only one or a few expressions. Merger and scènes à faire remain available to the defendant on remand. Read more: Where Ideas End and Expression Begins: The Ninth Circuit Revives Tangle's Sculpture Suit Against Aritzia ›
Why does fixation matter for a physical sculpture?
Because the defendant argued that a work designed to assume ever-changing poses is not "fixed." The court rejected that, holding that movable works are fixed if embodied in a perceivable material object, analogizing to choreography, film, and music. Read more: Where Ideas End and Expression Begins: The Ninth Circuit Revives Tangle's Sculpture Suit Against Aritzia ›
Does Thaler mean nothing made with AI can be copyrighted?
No. The holding addresses works with no claimed human author. Works reflecting meaningful human creative contribution may still be registered, with the AI-generated portions disclaimed. The court deliberately left the human-contribution threshold for another day. Read more: Authorship Without an Author: Thaler v. Perlmutter and the Human Floor of Copyright ›
Why didn't Thaler simply claim he was the author?
He tried, but only on appeal. Because he had told the Copyright Office the machine was the sole author and disclaimed human input, the D.C. Circuit treated the contrary argument as waived and decided the case on the record he created. Read more: Authorship Without an Author: Thaler v. Perlmutter and the Human Floor of Copyright ›
Is the question now settled?
As to fully autonomous machine output, effectively yes within the D.C. Circuit, and the Supreme Court's March 2026 cert denial leaves the ruling undisturbed. But cert denials are not merits rulings, the human-contribution line remains unlitigated, and Congress retains authority to change the statute. Read more: Authorship Without an Author: Thaler v. Perlmutter and the Human Floor of Copyright ›
Was this a generative-AI case?
No. Ross built a non-generative legal-research search tool, which is why courts have been careful not to read it as controlling the generative-AI training cases. Read more: Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era ›
Is the decision final?
No. It was certified for interlocutory appeal and the Third Circuit accepted review (No. 25-2153). The court heard oral argument on June 11, 2026, and had not issued a decision as of July 2026. Read more: Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era ›
Why did the software fair-use cases not help Ross?
Because those cases excuse copying needed to reach uncopyrightable functional elements. The court found Ross copied protected expression (West's editorial headnotes), not mere functional material. Read more: Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era ›
Why was Lynn Thomson not a co-author of Rent even though her contributions were copyrightable?
Because joint authorship under the Copyright Act requires a mutual intent to be co-authors, not just a copyrightable contribution. Larson billed himself as sole author, kept final decision-making authority, and contracted with third parties as the lone author, so the objective evidence showed he never intended to share authorship with Thomson. Read more: Thomson v. Larson: The Dramaturg of Rent and the Intent to Be Co-Authors ›
What is the Childress test that Thomson v. Larson applied?
It comes from Childress v. Taylor and asks two things: whether each putative author made an independently copyrightable contribution, and whether the parties mutually intended to be co-authors. Thomson turned on the second prong, which the court measured through decision-making authority, billing, and written agreements. Read more: Thomson v. Larson: The Dramaturg of Rent and the Intent to Be Co-Authors ›
How can a collaborator avoid the outcome in Thomson v. Larson?
By securing a written agreement that specifies co-authorship or an assignment of a defined share before contributing. Absent a contract, courts read objective signals such as credit and control, which a dominant author can arrange to defeat a later co-authorship claim. Read more: Thomson v. Larson: The Dramaturg of Rent and the Intent to Be Co-Authors ›
What did the court dismiss in Tremblay v. OpenAI?
On February 12, 2024, the court dismissed the authors' vicarious copyright infringement, DMCA Section 1202, negligence, and unjust enrichment claims, with leave to amend. It let a state unfair competition claim proceed under the unfair prong. The direct infringement theory based on unauthorized training copies was not part of the dismissal. Read more: Tremblay v. OpenAI: The Pleading Bar for Output-Based Infringement ›
Why did the vicarious infringement claim fail?
Because the plaintiffs did not allege that any particular ChatGPT output was substantially similar to their books. The court held that asserting every output is an infringing derivative work, without showing similarity between a specific output and a specific book, does not state a claim. Read more: Tremblay v. OpenAI: The Pleading Bar for Output-Based Infringement ›
Does Tremblay mean AI outputs can never infringe?
No. It holds only that a plaintiff must plead facts showing a specific output is substantially similar to a specific protected work, rather than relying on a blanket assertion. Output-based claims remain viable if pleaded with that particularity, and the training-copy theory was untouched. Read more: Tremblay v. OpenAI: The Pleading Bar for Output-Based Infringement ›
Why didn't Bambi fall into the U.S. public domain when it was published in 1923 without a copyright notice?
Because the Ninth Circuit treated the 1923 German publication as not putting the work into the U.S. public domain. Under the 1909 Act, copyright was secured only when the work was published with proper notice, which happened in the 1926 German edition, so the U.S. term began in 1926. Read more: Twin Books v. Disney: How Bambi Survived a Missing Copyright Notice ›
What did the 1923-versus-1926 dating change?
It moved the start of the initial 28-year copyright term. If the term ran from 1923, the 1954 renewal was too late and Bambi was public domain. Dating it to 1926 made the 1954 renewal timely, so the renewal copyright was valid and Disney's public-domain defense failed. The Ninth Circuit reversed the summary judgment and remanded. Read more: Twin Books v. Disney: How Bambi Survived a Missing Copyright Notice ›
Is Twin Books still good law?
It remains binding in the Ninth Circuit and is widely cited for pre-1978 foreign works, but scholars including Nimmer and William Patry have sharply criticized its reasoning. Other courts and the Copyright Office have not uniformly adopted it, so its rule is best treated as circuit-specific. Read more: Twin Books v. Disney: How Bambi Survived a Missing Copyright Notice ›
Did Grande lose its DMCA safe harbor in this appeal?
Grande had already lost the safe-harbor defense at the district court, which ruled it could not invoke Section 512 because it had no working repeat-infringer policy during the relevant years. Grande did not challenge that ruling on appeal, so the Fifth Circuit decided liability and damages without the safe harbor in play. Read more: When the Pipe Becomes Liable: UMG v. Grande and the ISP Repeat-Infringer Problem ›
Does an ISP have to terminate a customer's account to avoid liability?
The Fifth Circuit did not impose a flat termination rule, and its reasoning has since been vacated. In Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, decided March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court held that a service provider is contributorily liable only if it intended its service to be used to infringe, shown through inducement or a service tailored to infringement. Failing to terminate known repeat infringers is no longer sufficient on its own. Read more: When the Pipe Becomes Liable: UMG v. Grande and the ISP Repeat-Infringer Problem ›
Why did the court throw out the $46.7 million damages award?
The jury awarded statutory damages per individual song. The Fifth Circuit held that under Section 504(c) the songs released as parts of an album count as one work, so the award had to be vacated and damages retried on a per-album basis. The Supreme Court then vacated the Fifth Circuit's judgment on April 6, 2026 on the separate liability question, so the whole judgment is now back before that court. Read more: When the Pipe Becomes Liable: UMG v. Grande and the ISP Repeat-Infringer Problem ›
Did Veoh win?
Yes, on the safe-harbor question. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that § 512(c) protected Veoh. The victory was, however, pyrrhic: Veoh had already filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 2010, which its founder blamed on the distraction of the legal battles and the broader economic climate. Read more: Storage With Access: UMG v. Shelter Capital and the Reach of the § 512(c) Safe Harbor ›
Why did the court treat streaming and transcoding as "storage"?
Because, as the court put it, "The reason one has a website is so that others may view it." Reading § 512(c)'s phrase "by reason of the storage at the direction of a user" as broad causal language, the court held it covers the access-facilitating automatic functions that make stored content viewable. Read more: Storage With Access: UMG v. Shelter Capital and the Reach of the § 512(c) Safe Harbor ›
Does Unicolors mean any mistake on a registration is harmless?
No. An inaccuracy is excused only if the applicant did not actually know it was inaccurate. Knowing misstatements (and willful blindness to inaccuracy) still expose a registration to invalidation under § 411(b), and the error must also be one that would have caused the Register to refuse registration. Read more: Honest Mistakes of Law Survive: Unicolors v. H&M and the Scienter Floor of § 411(b) ›
Did the Supreme Court decide that Unicolors's registration was valid?
No. The Court resolved only the legal standard (that mistakes of law, like mistakes of fact, can be excused) and vacated and remanded. Whether Unicolors actually knew its single-application filing was inaccurate was left for the lower courts to determine under the correct standard. Read more: Honest Mistakes of Law Survive: Unicolors v. H&M and the Scienter Floor of § 411(b) ›
Who has the better of the willful-blindness point for litigants going forward?
Both sides gain something. Plaintiffs benefit from a forgiving subjective-knowledge rule; defendants retain a path to invalidation by proving, often circumstantially, that the applicant was aware of or deliberately avoided learning the truth. The practical contest now centers on the registrant's state of mind. Read more: Honest Mistakes of Law Survive: Unicolors v. H&M and the Scienter Floor of § 411(b) ›
What did Universal City Studios v. Corley hold?
The Second Circuit upheld an injunction barring Eric Corley from posting and linking to DeCSS, a program that decrypts DVD protection. It held the DMCA's anti-trafficking provision, Section 1201(a)(2), constitutional and ruled that the ban did not violate the First Amendment or fair use. Read more: Code, Keys, and the First Amendment: Universal City Studios v. Corley ›
If computer code is speech, how could the court ban it?
The court agreed code has an expressive component, but found the DMCA regulated DeCSS because of its function, not its message. As a content-neutral regulation of the code's functional capacity to decrypt, the ban survived intermediate First Amendment scrutiny. Read more: Code, Keys, and the First Amendment: Universal City Studios v. Corley ›
Why was linking to DeCSS treated as trafficking?
Corley not only posted DeCSS but also linked to other sites offering it and urged other web sites to post it. The district court applied a demanding test, requiring clear and convincing evidence that the linker knew the material was circumvention technology that could not lawfully be offered and linked for the purpose of disseminating it, and found it satisfied. The Second Circuit affirmed the linking ban, while declining to decide whether a test that rigorous is constitutionally required. Read more: Code, Keys, and the First Amendment: Universal City Studios v. Corley ›
Did Viacom win the case?
Not ultimately. Viacom won a significant appellate ruling in 2012 reviving its claims, but on remand the district court again sided with YouTube in 2013, and the case settled in 2014 with no payment reported. Read more: How Red Must the Flag Be? Viacom v. YouTube and the Specificity of § 512(c) Knowledge ›
What is "red flag" knowledge after this decision?
It is awareness of facts or circumstances that would make a specific infringement objectively obvious to a reasonable person. General knowledge that a platform contains infringing material is not enough. Read more: How Red Must the Flag Be? Viacom v. YouTube and the Specificity of § 512(c) Knowledge ›
Did the ruling create a duty to monitor?
No. The court reaffirmed that § 512(m) imposes no general monitoring obligation. Willful blindness can supply knowledge only where a provider consciously avoids confirming specific infringement it has strong reason to suspect. Read more: How Red Must the Flag Be? Viacom v. YouTube and the Specificity of § 512(c) Knowledge ›
What did VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone hold about music sampling?
The Ninth Circuit held that the de minimis exception applies to alleged copying of sound recordings, so an unauthorized sample that an average listener would not recognize as taken from the original is not actionable infringement. Read more: A 0.23-Second Split: VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone and the De Minimis Defense for Sampling ›
How does this case create a circuit split?
It expressly disagreed with the Sixth Circuit's 2005 decision in Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, which held that any unauthorized sampling of a sound recording, no matter how small, infringes. The Ninth Circuit rejected that bright-line 'get a license or do not sample' rule. Read more: A 0.23-Second Split: VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone and the De Minimis Defense for Sampling ›
What was actually sampled in Vogue?
The plaintiff alleged that producer Shep Pettibone copied a horn segment of no more than 0.23 seconds from the Salsoul Orchestra's 'Ooh I Love It (Love Break)' and used a modified version of it in Madonna's 'Vogue.' The court found any such copying was trivial and de minimis. Read more: A 0.23-Second Split: VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone and the De Minimis Defense for Sampling ›
Can a recording artist terminate the transfer of a master recording?
Potentially yes, under § 203, if the artist personally executed the grant and the recording is not a work made for hire. Both conditions are contested and fact-specific, as Waite illustrates. Read more: Recording Artists at the Termination Gate: Waite v. UMG Recordings ›
Why did the court refuse to certify a class?
Because both work-for-hire theories (the Reid employee factors and the "instance and expense" test for specially commissioned works) require an individualized inquiry into each artist's creative and financial arrangement, and the validity of each termination notice raised its own fact questions, so common issues did not predominate over individual ones. Read more: Recording Artists at the Termination Gate: Waite v. UMG Recordings ›
Why does a loan-out company matter?
Section 203 permits termination only of grants "executed by the author." When an artist's loan-out corporation, rather than the artist personally, executed the transfer, the court held there is no author-executed grant to terminate. Read more: Recording Artists at the Termination Gate: Waite v. UMG Recordings ›
Did the Supreme Court rule that Warhol's art infringed Goldsmith's copyright?
No. The Court decided only that the first fair use factor disfavored the Foundation's 2016 commercial license of "Orange Prince" to Condé Nast. It expressly declined to address the creation, display, or sale of the Prince Series works, and it did not enter a final infringement judgment. Read more: When Purpose Eclipses Meaning: Warhol v. Goldsmith and the Narrowing of Transformative Fair Use ›
Is "transformative use" dead after Warhol?
No, but it is diminished as a standalone argument. Transformative new expression remains relevant to the first factor, yet it is no longer dispositive. When a secondary use shares the original's purpose and is commercial, that combination will usually outweigh claims of new meaning. Read more: When Purpose Eclipses Meaning: Warhol v. Goldsmith and the Narrowing of Transformative Fair Use ›
What is the single most important takeaway for creators?
Focus on the purpose and market of the specific use. If your use competes commercially with the copyright owner's own licensing market and serves the same function, adding artistic meaning may not be enough to establish fair use. Read more: When Purpose Eclipses Meaning: Warhol v. Goldsmith and the Narrowing of Transformative Fair Use ›
Why were the Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind posters in the public domain?
Under the Copyright Act of 1909, a work received federal protection only if it was published with a proper copyright notice. The studios distributed posters, lobby cards, and publicity photos widely to promote the films, and none of the materials carried a notice. The Eighth Circuit found this was a general publication without notice, which forfeited protection and placed the materials in the public domain. Read more: Warner Bros. v. X One X: Public Domain Posters, Still-Protected Film Characters ›
Can a business legally sell products using those public domain movie images today?
Yes, within the boundary the Eighth Circuit drew. An exact reproduction of a single public domain publicity image, printed in two dimensions on a shirt, poster, or similar item, does not infringe. But combining two extracted images, pairing an image with a signature phrase from the underlying book, or building three-dimensional figures from the images adds a new increment of expression that evokes the film characters, and infringes the film copyrights. Read more: Warner Bros. v. X One X: Public Domain Posters, Still-Protected Film Characters ›
What are the 'increments of expression' the court protected?
They are the original expressive elements a film adds to a character beyond any preexisting public domain source: Judy Garland's specific look, voice, and demeanor as Dorothy, for example, rather than the girl described in L. Frank Baum's novel. Because those increments are original to the film, they remain protected by the film's copyright even when related publicity images lose protection. Read more: Warner Bros. v. X One X: Public Domain Posters, Still-Protected Film Characters ›
Does Nealy mean there is no statute of limitations on copyright damages?
No. The three-year limitations period in § 507(b) still applies, but it limits when a claim may be brought, not how far back damages reach once a claim is timely. A claim filed outside the limitations window is still barred; a timely claim, however, can recover for infringement no matter how old. Read more: Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy: The Supreme Court Unshackles Copyright Damages From the Three-Year Window ›
Did the Supreme Court endorse the discovery rule?
No. The Court assumed the discovery rule applied because the parties did, and decided only the damages question. It expressly did not decide whether the Copyright Act actually incorporates a discovery rule, and shortly afterward it declined to take up a case (Hearst v. Martinelli) that posed exactly that question. Read more: Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy: The Supreme Court Unshackles Copyright Damages From the Three-Year Window ›
Why does the Gorsuch dissent matter for future litigation?
Because it signals that at least three Justices doubt the discovery rule survives scrutiny. That makes the threshold accrual question the most likely next frontier: if the discovery rule falls, Nealy's pro-plaintiff damages holding would rarely come into play for older infringements. Read more: Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy: The Supreme Court Unshackles Copyright Damages From the Three-Year Window ›
What did Whelan v. Jaslow hold?
The Third Circuit held that copyright protection for a computer program extends beyond its literal code to the program's structure, sequence, and organization. The court treated the program's overall purpose as its unprotectable idea and everything not necessary to that purpose as protectable expression, so a competing program written in a different language for different hardware could still infringe. Read more: Whelan v. Jaslow: When Software Copyright Reached Structure, Sequence, and Organization ›
Is the Whelan structure, sequence, and organization test still good law?
Not as a working test. Whelan has never been formally overruled in the Third Circuit, but the Second Circuit's abstraction-filtration-comparison framework from Computer Associates v. Altai (1992) displaced it almost everywhere. Courts still recognize that nonliteral elements of software can be protected, which is Whelan's enduring core, but they no longer use its one-idea-per-program rule to decide how much. Read more: Whelan v. Jaslow: When Software Copyright Reached Structure, Sequence, and Organization ›
How does Whelan differ from Computer Associates v. Altai?
Whelan asked a single question: is the disputed material necessary to the program's purpose? If not, it was protectable expression. Altai instead breaks a program into levels of abstraction, filters out elements dictated by efficiency, external constraints, or the public domain, and compares only the protectable remainder. Altai criticized Whelan for assuming each program contains just one idea and for underweighting the functional realities of software. Read more: Whelan v. Jaslow: When Software Copyright Reached Structure, Sequence, and Organization ›
Why couldn't the jury simply listen to both records?
Because "Got to Give It Up" is a 1909-Act work whose copyright was limited to the lead sheet deposited with the Copyright Office, the recording's production elements were largely off the table for the similarity question; the comparison focused on notated composition. Read more: Infringing a Feeling? Williams v. Gaye and the "Blurred Lines" Verdict ›
Did everyone involved in "Blurred Lines" lose?
No. The Ninth Circuit affirmed liability against Williams and Thicke but reinstated the jury's verdict clearing rapper Clifford Harris Jr. (T.I.) and the Interscope/record-company parties. The Gayes did not win everything either: their motion for attorneys' fees was denied below, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that denial and the apportionment of costs. Read more: Infringing a Feeling? Williams v. Gaye and the "Blurred Lines" Verdict ›
Did Paramount win on the merits or on a technicality?
On the merits, at summary judgment. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that Top Gun: Maverick and the 1983 article are not substantially similar in protectable expression, and separately affirmed the contract ruling. Read more: What Survives the Filter: The Ninth Circuit's 'Top Gun: Maverick' Decision and the Limits of Substantial Similarity ›
Is the case completely over?
Not yet. The Ninth Circuit's January 2, 2026 decision ended the appeal, and rehearing was denied on February 12, 2026, but the Yonays filed a petition for certiorari on July 10, 2026, docketed as No. 26-61. Paramount's response is due August 13, 2026. The Supreme Court grants review in only a small fraction of petitions. Read more: What Survives the Filter: The Ninth Circuit's 'Top Gun: Maverick' Decision and the Limits of Substantial Similarity ›
Why didn't the heirs' § 203 termination help them?
The court's contract reasoning did not turn on the timing of the termination. The agreement conditioned credit on a film "produced ... hereunder," which the panel read to mean produced using the rights the agreement conveyed. Because Maverick did not infringe the article's copyright, Paramount never used those rights, so the film was not produced under the agreement. Read more: What Survives the Filter: The Ninth Circuit's 'Top Gun: Maverick' Decision and the Limits of Substantial Similarity ›
Educational content, not legal advice. These answers explain general legal concepts under U.S. law and are not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney. Laws vary by jurisdiction and change over time.