| Copyright Statutory Formalities |
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| Copyright protection in the United States is automatic upon the fixation of an original work of authorship. The use of the copyright notice and the registration of a work are referred to as formalities, which are the procedural requirements for securing and maintaining full copyright protection, and were formerly requirements for copyright protection. Some of the most sweeping changes under the 1976 Copyright Act involve copyright formalities. More... |
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| The First Sale Doctrine |
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| A copyright owner's right of distribution is limited by the first sale doctrine, which is an exception to the Copyright Act. The first sale doctrine is a legal principle that limits the rights to control content after a work has been sold for the first time. The first sale doctrine states that once a copyright owner sells a copy of his or her work to another, the copyright owner relinquishes all further rights to sell or otherwise dispose of that copy. More... |
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| Federal Unfair Competition Law |
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| The law of unfair competition is primarily comprised of torts that cause an economic injury to a business through a deceptive or wrongful business practice. Unfair competition consists of two broad categories. First, the term "unfair competition" is sometimes used to refer only to those torts that are meant to confuse consumers as to the source of the product. The other category, "unfair trade practices," comprises all other forms of unfair competition. In this context, unfair competition does not refer to the economic harms involving monopolies and antitrust legislation. More... |
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| The Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 |
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| The Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 (SWSA) allows the recording industry and small webcasters to negotiate lower webcasting royalty fees. The SWSA empowers SoundExchange, which is the recording industry's royalty collection clearinghouse, to enter into royalty rate agreements with small commercial and all noncommercial webcasters. More... |
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| Patentability of Business Methods |
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| In the latter part of the 20th century, there was a slow realization that the basis for rejecting business method patent applications was not because the invention to be patented was a business method but because the subject matter of the application did not meet the fundamental requirements for patents such as novelty and non-obviousness. With the widespread use of computers and the development of business methods involving computers, courts were forced to reexamine the question of whether a business method could be patented or, as they had been treated by the USPTO, were inherently unpatentable. In 1998, the federal court that hears all appeals of patent decisions ruled once and for all that business methods could be patented if they produce a "useful, tangible, and concrete result." The court concluded that a system that used a computer to calculate a mutual fund share price from a complex set of parameters was not an abstract idea but rather a machine--embodied by the computer--that produced a useful result--the share price. More... |
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