The Grapes of Roth

My latest article, “The Grapes of Roth,” has just come out in print in the Washington Law Review. In it, I argue that copyright law passed through at least three important phases over the course of the last century, in which judges struggled in different ways with the process of how to determine whether two works are infringing. This periodization of copyright decision-making is, I believe, insufficiently appreciated; copyright lawyers, scholars, and students tend to read cases from any era as going about the decision-making process in the same way. The goal of the article is to focus more attention on how decision-making has varied over time, and to at least begin the discussion of which era’s procedure is closer to optimal.

The title is a reference to the old copyright chestnut Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co., in which the majority concluded that infringement was the right call based on the shared “total concept and feel” of the plaintiff’s and defendant’s greeting cards. The “total concept and feel” standard from Roth is one that copyright lawyers love to hate. The phrase is nearly meaningless: concepts are explicitly excluded from protection under 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), and copyrighted works are distinct from any physical embodiment, meaning they have no “feel.” The influential Nimmer treatise has for decades reproached the standard as “invit[ing] an abdication of analysis.”

So why is it so popular? Judges seem to have no qualms about using it, no matter what the commentariat says. They have cited it regularly as the standard for infringement in cases involving non-identical works from the 1980s to the present day. Indeed, it has found its way into jury instructions: juries are commonly told, without further elaboration, that two works are infringing if one was copied from the other and they share the same “total concept and feel.” The answer to this puzzle, I argue, sheds light on the transition from the first phase to the second, and reveals the trap sprung (or the “grapes” pressed) in the third.

Over the next several days I’m going to serialize the article here. I’ll cover in somewhat less detail (but with more images!) the three historical phases I identify, and then wrap up with a concluding post on whether those phases are limited to copyright law.

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Texas Deputies and S.B. 8

If you’re like the rest of the United States, then you are aware of the recent attempts to restrict the right to abortion pre-viability — a right affirmed by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v Casey., 505 U.S. 833. Despite the holding in Planned Parenthood, States continue to pass legislation restricting abortion. In some States, these attempts are no more than a brazen attempt to ban nontherapeutic pre-viability abortions.

By the end of 2021, some fifteen States had passed legislation that banned non-therapeutic pre-viability abortions, commonly referred to as “Heartbeat bills.” (As of this writing, the states are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.) Though neither the progenitor nor the ultimate occurrence, S.B. 8, passed by Texas’s legislature and signed into law by Governor Abbott, has created rather significant waves in the legal landscape. Perhaps predictably, other States have emulated Texas’s approach, an approach that some commentators call the most restrictive abortion legislation to be passed post-Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113). A quick perusal of one’s favorite internet search engine will reveal the myriad commentary discussing the ways in which Texas and other States have been ingeniously skirting the dictates of the Supreme Court.

So, what is it that makes Texas’s legislation so newsworthy? Truly, it is not the restrictions that Texas has imposed that makes this law exceptional. After all, States have been passing restrictions on abortion long before the right was recognized by the Supreme Court. It is, also, not the fact that Texas is attempting to make it impossible for women, other than victims of rape and incest, to obtain an abortion once a heartbeat is detected; Texas is hardly novel in its endeavors in this area. What makes Senate Bill 8 so exceptional is its novel enforcement scheme.

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Foxconn Deal Tips the Scales of Justice

Photo of the front of the building that houses the U.S. Supreme Court, with an inscription above th doorway that reads "equal justice under the law."

The following opinion piece appears in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 

 

Our system of justice rests upon two pillars: equal treatment and independent judgment.  Every person who appears before our state courts expects to be treated equally to every other litigant.  In addition, every party to a lawsuit expects to have his case heard by a judge who is free to exercise their own independent judgment.  Recently, the state legislature in Madison and Governor Walker approved legislation – a $3 billion package luring Foxconn Technology Group to build a flat-screen TV factory in Racine County — that seriously undermines these two fundamental principles.

The principle of equal treatment commands that the same rules should apply to all parties appearing before the court.  No one should receive special status.  It is true that the two sides in a case might not be evenly matched, and that one might have more financial resources or a more skilled legal team.  But, even then, both parties in the case should be subject to the same set of laws and procedures, and have the same opportunity to argue that the law supports their claim.

The Foxconn legislation creates special treatment for Foxconn whenever that corporation is sued in Wisconsin courts.  The law forces the Wisconsin Supreme Court to directly take appeals involving “Electronics and Information Technology Manufacturing Zones” (EITM) from the circuit courts. By law there is only one such zone, and that zone is home to Foxconn. Typically, the high court would hear appeals at their discretion, and then only after the case was heard by an intermediate court.  The reason for placing cases involving Foxconn on a “fast-track” to the Wisconsin Supreme Court should be obvious.  That Court currently boasts a majority of Justices who were elected with the financial support of Wisconsin’s largest trade and manufacturing lobbyists.  The drafters of the legislation expect these Justices to be sympathetic to the concerns of manufacturers like Foxconn.

We expect our state court judges to be free to exercise their independent judgment when deciding the merits of a case.  It is the trial judge that hears the facts and the evidence, and who determines the appropriate remedy should the plaintiff prevail.  It is not the state legislature’s job to decide which party in a case should win, or what remedy should be imposed in an individual case.

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