Academic

Field on Custom & Law in Copyright

By Lawrence Solum

Thomas G. Field, Jr. (Franklin Pierce Law Center) has posted From Custom to Law in Copyright on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This paper explores two situations where custom may have been misperceived as trumping copyright law. The first part considers why lawyers can copy many practice-related documents without permission and explains why those reasons do not apply to other documents that cannot be so freely copied. The second part considers how schools' customary disinterest in owning copyright in academic employees' works has inappropriately influenced the outcome of unrelated litigation. As to both practice-related documents and copyrightable works of faculty, the paper argues, not that custom is irrelevant, but that that careful attention should be given to reasons for customary behavior before determining its effect on the law.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).