Copyright

Google library book project held to be a fair use under copyright law

A federal district court has upheld Google's library book project as an authorized fair use under the federal Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §101 et esq., Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 2013 WL 6017130 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). The court upheld the power of Google to scan copyrighted books held by libraries and to give those libraries digital copies of those scans. It also upheld Google's power to make the text of those books searchable so that researchers could view snippets of those books and could search the books for...

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Second Circuit upholds "hot news" doctrine

A recent case replays the conflict in the famous case of INS v. AP (International News Service v. Associated Press), 248 U.S. 215 (1918), which held that a news organization could stop a rival from selling news it had gathered for a short period when the news was still hot. In effect, the doctrine created a property right against a competitor's use of the information for commercial purposes during the initial sales period. The Second Circuit reaffirmed that doctrine in the case o...

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