Posts Tagged: "2 Live Crew"

The View from the Court’s 2 Live Crew: Examining the Thomas/Alito Dissent in Google v. Oracle

Most commentators agree that Google v. Oracle is the most important copyright decision of the last 25 years (since Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music). But what if the Court got it wrong?  The Court has not always done well with issues of technology (the Sony v. Universal “Betamax” case being an exception), and the majority decision in Google v. Oracle appears to be more of the same. For many reasons, the powerful dissent from Justices Thomas and Alito may be the better opinion.

Copyright Fair Use Cases of the United States Supreme Court

October overwhelmingly means one thing in the legal world. No, not Halloween, although to some it may seem just as scary. Every October the United States Supreme Court breaks its hibernation and starts its new session. Every case heard and decision handed down by the Supreme Court between October 1, 2012 and the end of June 2013 will be a part of the Court’s October 2012 term. This, the first of what will be a handful of SCOTUS related intellectual property articles, is a summary of the most important Supreme Court copyright fair use cases dating back to Baker v. Selden in 1879.

Olympic Gymnastics Parody and the 2 Live Crew

Given the fact that the IOC is notoriously litigious, are the WSJ and the Guardian in trouble for their little vignettes? Nah -thanks to the 2 Live Crew. Parody is a defense that falls under the broader category of Fair Use. The 2 Live Crew case (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)) is the Fair Use decision that all other interpretations flow from. The Court had to start with determining if 2 Live Crew’s use was satire or parody. Satire, as defined by the Campbell court and the Oxford Dictionary in 1994, is a work “in which prevalent follies or vices are assailed with ridicule”, which is a very weird way of saying “your work is being made fun of for being stupid”. Parody, however, is more closely related to a spoof or a humorous exaggeration. Courts still struggle with both concepts in the realm of copyright infringement and the fair use defense. But we did learn from Campbell is that commercial use does not take a use out of the realm of parody.