Intellectual Property Law – Page 33 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Future Imperfect

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:July 27, 2009
Post category:Computer Law Intellectual Property Law

Urban Factory A couple of weeks ago Amazon remotely deleted two e-books off of its customers’ Kindle readers—and in one of those too-good-to-be-true moments, the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. Ars Technica and the New York Times explain what happened; the Times ran a follow-up story today. Commentary on the incident has ranged from the fervid to the apocalyptic. (An exception is Chicago’s Randy Picker.) Jack Balkin argues that “Amazon threatens many of the basic freedoms to read we have come to expect in a physical world;” Jonathan Zittrain worries that “tethered appliances” like the Kindle “are gifts to regulators,” who will exercise a “line-item veto” over passages in books they don’t like; Farhad Manjoo at Slate concludes that “Now we know what the future of book banning looks like.”

What I find intriguing about these responses is that they are all based on analogizing Kindle e-books to physical books located in your house.

Google Library Project Preliminary Settlement – Being Scrutinized Worldwide

Post author:Eric Lalor
Post published:July 24, 2009
Post category:Intellectual Property Law

We are used to the Recording Industry Association of America aggressively litigating against individuals and organizations, trying to impede copyright infringements of musical works through peer-to-peer networks and/or other file-sharing technologies. The original Napster was converted to a pay-based music subscription service years ago and, more recently, Kazaa did the same.

In light of the heated litigation in the music distribution industry, it was not surprising, by analogy, that Google quickly caught the attention of the Author’s Guild (AG) and Association of American Publishers (AAP) when Google started a massive book-scanning initiative and made the content electronically available over the Web. This project, known as the Google Library Project (sometimes referred to as “Google Book Search” and formerly known as “Google Print”) led to numerous lawsuits soon after its inception. After fighting for a few of years over copyright issues, Google reached a preliminary settlement with the AG and AAP for $125 million and also by establishing a royalty registry.

The preliminary settlement has already caught the attention of numerous critics, including the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ was inundated with public comments, questioning whether the settlement would give Google monopolistic rights to distribute, for example, numerous out-of-print books. The DOJ has not formally opposed the settlement, but has started investigating what effects the settlement may have on competition.

A few days ago, public scrutiny of the terms of the Google Library Project preliminary settlement was extended beyond the U.S. borders. The European Commission (EC) is proactively requesting comments from European Union (EU) authors and publishers, arranging a meeting between EC representatives and EU authors and publishers early in the fall. During that meeting, the EC hopes to discuss the terms of the preliminary settlement, presumably to evaluate how an analogous settlement in the EU might impact copyrights, as well as antitrust considerations.

Although Google’s Library Project continues to grow, there are certainly a lot of remaining issues to resolve.

IP Colloquium Tackles Fairey v. AP

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:July 22, 2009
Post category:Intellectual Property Law

Doug Lichtman at UCLA is producing a fantastic series of monthly podcasts on IP issues, called the Intellectual Property Colloquium. This month’s episode is on fair use in the Shepard Fairey case, and features a terrific line-up of guests: Mark Lemley, attorney for Fairey; Dale Cendali, attorney for AP; and Ken Richieri, General Counsel at the New York Times, who adds the view of someone on both sides of the issue. Doug asks some pretty good questions, particularly about the notoriously circular fourth fair use factor (the effect on the potential market). It’s worth a listen, and you can also use it for CLE credit in six states, “and any state that accepts any of those through reciprocity,” which I believe includes Wisconsin (do not rely on me for this).