Christopher Smith wrote:
[snip]
I confess that I don't understand many of these cases at all. Many of
the arguments upheld by the judges are contradictory, to my eye anyway,
and it is beyond me how someone could think that a left-hand piano riff
in common use for seventy years or more could be copyrighted, simply by
virtue of it's being used in a popular song.
I strongly suspect it is a matter of who has the biggest, most muscular
lawyers arguing the case.
I think you're correct but I would add that not only do the lawyers have
to be the biggest, most muscular copyright attorneys, the successful
party has to have the deepest pockets. Which was what made the George
Harrison MySweetLord/He'sSoFine case so interesting -- both parties had
very, very deep pockets.
One thing I find amusing among all these apparently conflicting
decisions is that the newer era of intellectual property and copyright
law is still a wide-open frontier and all the judges are trying to come
up with the definitive ruling, paying less attention to case law than
other older, more well established areas of the law. Each judge wants
to be the one who all future cases turn to and all future judges use as
a basis for their rulings. So no judges want to be seen as following
other judges in this area, not yet. It's sort of an alpha-dog/beta-dog
fight among the judges, in my opinion.
Either that or they simply have no clue and decide in favor of the one
they like the looks of better or the one with what the judge thinks is
the nicer song. So George Harrison singing about Hare Krishna didn't
have a snowball's chance in hell in a court where the judge goes to a
christian church on Sundays.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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