In a post earlier in the week, Jessica Price highlighted Fastcase, the online legal database that will soon be available to members of the Wisconsin State Bar at no additional cost. The Marquette Law Library explored Fastcase over the summer and is in the final integration stages of a subscription that will allow law students and law faculty access to the complete Fastcase database.
When it rains, it pours. This week there has been a slew of developments in copyright law. The motion picture studios have sued RealNetworks over its RealDVD application, claiming that RealNetworks violated the license it signed to get the decryption keys to DVDs. Congress passed a measure designed to ease the pressure on small webcasters after the Copyright Royalty Tribunal suddenly increased their fees. Congress also passed a version of the PRO-IP bill, which, ignoring a district court judge’s call to reduce copyright penalties, actually adds to them by allowing civil forfeiture of computer equipment in certain cases.
But the development I want to highlight here is the apparent decision by a court in India that Scrabulous does not infringe on the copyright for Scrabble. (The name, however, was held to infringe on the Scrabble trademark.) I wrote a four-part series for Prawfsblawg back in August that analyzed the case and copyright in games generally. (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.) Unfortunately the only news of the decision is from the Agarwalla brothers, the creators of Scrabulous, themselves; we don’t have the judge’s reasoning. But I’d be eager to see if it matches any of the points of my analysis.
Ethan Ackerman was kind enough to respond to my recent post on ProCD v. Zeidenberg, in which I suggested that “the case for contracts somehow expanding copyright rights is vastly overstated, and perhaps illusory.” Sure, Ackerman’s post is critical, but I’m happy to generate even critical responses. Ackerman suggests that a recently filed case in the Virginia courts shows, allegedly contra me, that “there’s an open, ongoing and unsettled problem with parties attempting to reverse, by contract clause, an issue that is addressed and settled by federal copyright law.”
The problem is, that wasn’t my argument.