Plaintiffs claim A&E used short clip of "Rocky Top" synchronized in a television program, despite plaintiff's refusal to grant a license. Defense claims fair use, stating that the clip is only 12 seconds long and is background to a football game filled with ambient noise. The case docket is featured by Justia and the Stanford Fair Use site.

Claims of direct, contributory, vicarious and inducement of copyright infringement filed against a lyrics wiki which allegedly scrapes hundreds of thousands of lyrics and redistributes via facebook and other sites.  Stanford Fair Use and Justia feature the case docket including the Aug 24th complaint.

Our advisory board members have been blogging away on their own blogs about copyright - specifically whether or not Nuremberg trial transcripts are in the public domain. Rich Stim started it and concludes YES, public domain. Peter Hirtle concurs but with slightly different analysis.
 

We've added a twitter feed of lawyers and law professors registered with Legal Birds on copyright. It's fed with the keywords (copyright OR fair use OR fairuse). It's on the right side of our home page.

http://bit.ly/SWCiz  When the author signs rights away to publishers, some contracts allow authors to reclaim rights in the future. Given the two year window to opt out or remove one's book, a publisher may assent to the google books agreement and the author is out of luck when the rights revert to him or her.   Copyright law, moreover, safeguards authors' rights after about 35 years, allowing a chance to reclaim copyright.  Again, if the publisher already assents, the author's power to remove the book has lapsed, despite the right to share in revenue.

A new Firefox extension helps you share PACER court docs. It's called RECAP: Turning PACER Around -- http://recapthelaw.org  Incredibly innovative way to share public domain docs that courts prefer to charge you for.

http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/california/cacdce/2:2004cv09484/167815/#20090809

See letters to the court supporting and opposing the settlement http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/new-york/nysdce/1:2005cv08136/273913/#20090807

Justia makes court filings available for key copyright cases in district courts at http://news.justia.com/cases/copyright/ #copyright 

Cambridge University Press v. Patton is a publishers' suit against a public university that makes electronic copies of course readings available to students without paying royalty fees. #copyright Court docs courtesy of Justia. http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/georgia/gandce/1:2008cv01425/150651/

Blackwell Publishing v. Miller is an Ann Arbor (MI) copy shop case in which the customers make the photocopies of coursepacks. Latest filing is Aug 3, in which the publishers reply to a summary judgment motion by the copy shop. Courtesy of Justia. http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/michigan/miedce/2:2007cv12731/222190/

Read the First Amendment argument advanced in Salinger case in a brief filed today by the Fair Use Project, Georgetown Law Center and the Samuelson clinic.  It urges the Second Circuit to adopt a more stringent test for issuing preliminary injunctions against books and other expressive works, and to reject the narrow interpretation of the fair use doctrine applied by the District Court. See Anthony Falzone's blog post and brief at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6230