Recent publications

Issues five and six of the 2010 series of Sweet & Maxwell's European Copyright and Design Reports (ECDR) have both now been published, within days of one another. Cases reported include the recent England and Wales Chancery Division decision on summary judgment for copyright infringement in Allen v Bloomsbury and Rowling (noted by this blog here), the Irish High Court ruling in EMI and others v UPC on the availability of injunctive relief against internet service providers (noted here) and the Court of Justice ruling in the Dali resale rights case (noted here).

The fourth and final issue of Sweet & Maxwell's Intellectual Property Quarterly (IPQ) for this year features "The Centrality of Architecture in Copyright Law" by the University of Exeter's James G. H. Griffin -- the architecture in question being that of Lessig rather than Wren or Palladio: "the way the world is, or the way specific aspects of it are".  Indeed ...

Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel have a highly challenging and lively essay, Imagine there's no copyright and no cultural conglomerates too (you can download it here at no cost). Joost, who is Research Fellow, Research Group Arts & Economics at the Utrecht School of the Arts, explains,

"I just became aware of your interesting blog 1709. Three centuries after this event my co-author and I analyse that it is time to get rid of this tool called copyright. As mentioned in the title of the book, we should also reduce the size of cultural conglomerates that dominate markets substantially, by using revitalised anti trust policies. It does not make sense to approach the question of IP rights isolated from the question whether markets are level playing fields or not. What Queen Anne did [in 1709] was to avoid that book markets would be level playing fields. Now, it's time to reverse this trend". 

Not content with abolishing copyright, the authors dismantle patents too. For those who enjoy vigorous assertion, provocative claims, enthusiastic generalisations and a perspective based largely on the writings of some distinguished radical academic commentators on intellectual property, this is a must-read document.

"The body corporate as author of a copyright protected work" is a Current Intelligence case note by Ankur Gupta on the recent Singapore decision in Pioneers & Leader (Publishers) Ltd v Asia Pacific Publishing Pte Ltd [2010] SGHC 211.  It'll be published in the hard-copy version of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice next year, but the online version has been available since last week. You can read it here on the jiplp weblog. This decision expanded the scope of authorship under Singapore's copyright law, holding that there is nothing in principle to prevent an incorporated body being deemed the author of a copyright protected work.

Something to read this summer

A few weeks ago I wrote on this weblog that there was a new copyright book just coming out -- Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright, edited by Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently. Delightfully, it comes in hardback, paperback and digital download formats and, if you don't want to buy it, you can still read it online free of charge, here. The good news is that the book is now out, and you can get all the relevant information about it from Open Book Publishers here.

Meanwhile, SABIP -- the UK's Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property Policy -- reminds us that, in February 2010, it organised a policy panel debate to discuss the issues raised by the proposed Google Books settlement. The good news is that a report of proceedings, along with SABIP's own policy recommendations, was published online last Friday and is now available to download here. Also available from the same source is a report, "Attitudes and Behaviours of Consumers in the Digital Age", which you can download here.

Something to read -- or to listen to

From Natalie Nathon comes this link to "Games and other uncopyrightable systems". The subject of this post from Bruce E. Boyden (Marquette University Law School) is news that a fascinating article under that title has been uploaded here on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). According to the abstract:

"This article solves two puzzles in copyright law. First, it has long been blackletter law that games are not copyrightable [in the USA, maybe, but elsewhere ...?]. But the origins of this rule are lost to history, and the reasons for it are not obvious. Second, it has never been adequately explained what makes something a “system” excluded from copyright protection under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act. Modern courts interpret “system” as merely a synonym for “idea” or “process,” two other categories of exclusions. Others have interpreted it using the broadest definition in the dictionary, which would sweep in large amounts of copyrightable material as well. Neither definition gives the term any meaningful content.

Like solving a crossword puzzle, this article uses each of these questions to shed light on the other. Games are uncopyrightable because they are systems. The case law that led to the adoption of Section 102(b) demonstrates that systems are schemes for transforming user inputs into a correlated set of outputs. Games do exactly that. A game is a scheme for transforming player activities into moves within the game. The reason why games and other systems are uncopyrightable then becomes clear: the purpose of a system is to serve as a forum for user activity; it is users, not authors, who provide the primary informational value to the outputs of a system. Games and other systems are excluded in order to fence in copyright protection before it reaches user creation".

From Gina Preoteasa (Trylon) comes news of a new podcast from Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book podcast. This podcast features William Patry (Senior Copyright Counsel, Google). Bill talks about his book Moral Panics and The Copyright Wars, "the lightning pace at which technology is changing our content consumption and the fact that copyright must adapt to our changing behaviors". Podcast here; transcript here.

Patry enthusiasts may not want to stop at the podcast though. The author has a blog bearing the same title here, and the book, published by Oxford University Press, is available here. If you want to know what's about, this is how the publishers describe it:

"Metaphors, moral panics, folk devils, Jack Valenti, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, predictable irrationality, and free market fundamentalism are a few of the topics covered in this lively, unflinching examination of the Copyright Wars: the pitched battles over new technology, business models, and most of all, consumers.

... William Patry lays bare how we got to where we are: a bloated, punitive legal regime that has strayed far from its modest, but important roots. Patry demonstrates how copyright is a utilitarian government program--not a property or moral right. As a government program, copyright must be regulated and held accountable to ensure it is serving its public purpose. Just as Wall Street must serve Main Street, neither can copyright be left to a Reaganite "magic of the market."

The way we have come to talk about copyright--metaphoric language demonizing everyone involved--has led to bad business and bad policy decisions. Unless we recognize that the debates over copyright are debates over business models, we will never be able to make the correct business and policy decisions.

A centrist and believer in appropriately balanced copyright laws, Patry concludes that calls for strong copyright laws, just like calls for weak copyright laws, miss the point entirely: the only laws we need are effective laws, laws that further the purpose of encouraging the creation of new works and learning. Our current regime, unfortunately, creates too many bad incentives, leading to bad conduct. Just as President Obama has called for re-tooling and re-imagining the auto industry, Patry calls for a remaking of our copyright laws so that they may once again be respected".

For the record, the book's ISBNs are 9780195385649 and 0195385640. It's a hardback, xxiv + 266 pages -- and it's a snip at just $29.95.