To access the 2014-2015 Supplement click here. Copyright Law is unique among copyright casebooks in that it is tightly and coherently structured, intelligently distilled, and clearly contextualized. Halpern's casebook explores the complex and sometimes counterintuitive issues surrounding protection of intellectual creativity under US copyright law by ensuring that both student and professor always maintain an understanding of how doctrinal elements relate to the whole. Thus, the book is perfect for those students who have struggled with dense notes and opaque explanations, professors who have labored through cumbersome and poorly ordered texts, and for new teachers who need a concise and clear pedagogic template complete with both substantive doctrine and highly instructive cases. Simply put, Copyright Law is a refreshing primer on the title topic, and a welcome alternative to less coherent texts. The second edition expands upon the first and brings the material up-to-date while retaining its eminently teachable structure. "...a great primer for all things copyright...an excellent overview of the topic. The table of contents reads like a class outline you would 'borrow' from the smart guy sitting up front." -- Legal Information Alert, on the first edition

Professor Litman's work stands out as well-researched, doctrinally solid, and always piercingly well-written.-JANE GINSBURG, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property, Columbia UniversityLitman's work is distinctive in several respects: in her informed historical perspective on copyright law and its legislative policy; her remarkable ability to translate complicated copyright concepts and their implications into plain English; her willingness to study, understand, and take seriously what ordinary people think copyright law means; and her creativity in formulating alternatives to the copyright quagmire. -PAMELA SAMUELSON, Professor of Law and Information Management; Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California, BerkeleyIn 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts.In this enlightening and well-argued book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society?Litman's critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork. She argues for reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.This paperback edition includes an afterword that comments on recent developments, such as the end of the Napster story, the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, the escalation of a full-fledged copyright war, the filing of lawsuits against thousands of individuals, and the June 2005 Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case.Jessica Litman (Ann Arbor, MI) is professor of law at Wayne State University and a widely recognized expert on copyright law.

Copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, perform or prepare derivitives of an original fixed work such as literary, artistic, musical, dramatic or related works. Since copyright is controlled by federal law, this book is a national text that answers every practical question relating to ownership use and transfer of copyrights. It is a practical work that contains forms, regulations and detailed instructions on registering, assigning and acquiring copyright, as well as information about investigating imitations and stopping infringers. There is substantial legal background including references to all major cases as well as historical background inlcuding some emphasis on the landmark decisions of Learned Hand.

Copyright law regulates creativity. It affects the way people create works of authorship ex-ante and affects the status of works of authorship significantly ex-post. But does copyright law really understand creativity? Should legal theories alone inform our regulation of the creative process? This book views copyright law as a law of creativity. It asks whether copyright law understands authorship as other creativity studies fields do. It considers whether copyright law should incorporate non-legal theories, and if so, how it should be adjusted in their light. For this purpose, the book focuses on one of the many rights that copyright law regulates – the right to make a derivative work. A work is considered derivative when it is based on one or more preexisting works. Today, the owner of a work of authorship has the exclusive right to make derivative works based on her original work or to allow others to do so. The book suggests a new way to think about both the right, the tension, and copyright law at large. It proposes relying on non-legal fields like cognitive psychology and genre theories, and offers new legal-theoretical justifications for the right to make derivative works. As the first book to consider the intersection between copyright law, creativity and derivative works, this will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in intellectual property and copyright law.

Written by two nationally recognized lawyers who have litigated major copyright cases in today's digital age, Copyright Law, Second Edition helps you to: - understand the scope of copyright owners' exclusive rights - prove copyright infringement and obtain appropriate remedies - renew, restore, and recapture copyrights - know when Internet-related activities constitute copyright infringement

This casebook emphasizes the essential cases and materials at the heart of copyright law. The result is a streamlined and well-organized casebook of manageable length that keeps the central themes of copyright front and center. It also provides access to a companion Web site containing an extensive library of additional modules, topics, edited cases, notes, problems, and audio-visual materials. Together these materials, along with a companion teacher's manual, allow teachers to easily customize the copyright law course to suit their specific goals. The authors have written extensively about copyright, the arts, and the impact of new technology.