Copyright, Fair Use, & Author Rights: Recent Court Cases

On December 19, 2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Court of Appeals Says “No Seuss For You!” by Stephen Carlisle, January 6, 2021. Carlisle wrote, "Appeals definitively ruled that the Dr. Seuss-Star Trek “mash-up” titled Oh, The Places You’ll Boldly Go was not fair use."

A California judge rules that a recording engineer's work constitutes sufficient creativity to create a new copyright of a sound recording when it is re-mastered from analog to digital. This is mainly regarding pre-1972 recordings.

This case concerns a 0.23 second sampling of a horn hit in Madonna's song Vogue. The judge ruled that the sampling was small enough to be trivial and therefore, not a copyright violation.

It is finally official. Google's book scanning project is okay.

See what's being proposed in Congress as well as links for info on hearings & international issues.

A speech by the Registrar of Copyrights delivered at Columbia Law School. It provided a historical overview of the development of U.S. copyright law and explained why a comprehensive review of our law is now needed. These views were also presented to Congress and lead to a series of hearings on copyright.

A up-to-date list of copyright cases, the court and the deciding judge.