CEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE–FAULKNER ED.

The literary estate of William Faulkner has been on quite a tear this past week.  On October 25th it filed a copyright infringement suit against Sony Pictures Classics, and on October 26th another against Northrop Grumman Corporation and The Washington Post.  Both suits center around the attibuted use of a famous Faulkner aphorism.  In the Sony…

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LITTLE ORPHAN ANNOYANCES

As the author of a work of narrative legal history with a focus on the early part of the 20th Century, the problem of orphan works is near and dear to my heart.  Thanks to the overly generous copyright terms extensions granted by Congress in 1998, my ability to quote some very relevant unpublished manuscripts and to reproduce certain…

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GOOD PORTENTS FOR GOOGLE LIBRARY?

We were waiting and watching for what promised to be a landmark fair use decision from Judge Denny Chin in the Google Library litigation when the case was stayed while its certification as a class action was appealed.  In the meantime, a companion case before Judge Harold Baer, The Authors Guild v. Hathitrust, involving a consortium of universities…

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NASHVILLE

One of the pleasures of my copyright law practice over the years has been that  from time-to-time it brings me into contact with the Nashville music community, and sometimes—though not nearly often enough—takes me down to Music City itself.  Its usually hum-drum, behind-the-scenes stuff, but there has been the occasional spot of glamour and excitement, such as sitting back-to-back with a 16-year-old…

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