Copyright Outline

COPYRIGHT OUTLINE

Picker – Winter, 2014

[I. INTRODUCTION]

A. Constitutional Power

a. Congress shall have the power to “promote” the progress of science and the arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

B. Cases

i. Burrow-Giles – Oscar Wilde

a. Photos count as they are fixed original works in a tangible medium of expression

ii. Bleistein

a. P gave D chromolithographs to use to advertise a circus. Then used to make new art kind of.

b. Does not matter that they are a picture of something that occurs in nature because turning into art makes that art the expression.

c. Don’t want court to determine what is artistic enough.

d. Does not matter if it’s just for business’ sake.

C. Statutes

a. 101 – Copies

i. Definition: material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

ii. Includes the material object in which the work is first fixed

b. Created

c. Fixed

i. A work is “fixed” in a tangible medium of expression when:

1. Its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration.

d. Literary Work:

i. Works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers or other verbal or numberical symbols, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, phonorecords, film, tapes, disks or cards in which they are embodied

ii. The work is a distinct thing from the material object on which it is attached.

e. Pictorial/graphic/sculptural works

i. Includes two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of fine, graphic, and applied art, photographs, prints and art reproductions, maps, globes, charts, diagrams, models, and technical drawings, including architectural plans.

ii. The design must have features separate from and capable of existing independently of the utilitarian aspects of the article

f. 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General

i. (a): Copyright protection subsists in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, known now or later developed ..

ii. (b): copyright does not extend to “any idea, procedure, process, system, method, concept, principle, or discovery…”

g. 106 – Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

i. Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

1. (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

2. (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

3. (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

4. (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

5. (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

6. (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

h. 201 – Initial Ownership

i. Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work.

i. 202 –ownership of copyright distinct from material object

i. Ownership of a copyright or those rights is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied.

ii. Transfer: transfer of ownership of the material object does not convey rights in the copyrighted work embodied in it. Nor does transfer of copyright convey prope