Owners, Borrowers & Thieves 2.0 : Husch Blackwell Sanders LLP : First Amendment, Commercial Speech

Coming soon to a blogoshpere near you . . .

As regular readers of this blog know, we have often used this space as a means to follow and comment on the continuing tension that results from trying to fit new technologies, new types of content and new content delivery systems into old paradigms of intellectual property law.  Sometimes it's copyright -- for example, YouTube's assault on (or defense behind) the DMCA;  sometimes its trademark -- for example, whether Google Keyword ads constitute trademark use for purposes of an infringement claim; sometimes it's even Comics!

Recently we've realized that our mutual interest in emerging technologies and how the law practice can adapt to a changing IP environment has been prompting us to adapt our blogging to fit our own new paradigm.  We're very excited about some changes that will be coming shortly, including adding a fresh new voice or two.

We hope we've been "fairly useful" (to borrow Professor Sag's great blog title) so far, and hope you'll check in regularly as we go forward.

Stay tuned . . .  

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The new year opened with an intriguing study by two American University professors that concludes that many online videos which use copyrighted materials do so in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration under copyright law.  These are, of course, the very same uses of copyrighted material under siege by a variety of "anti-piracy" measures online.

The study--Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video--identifies nine kinds of uses of copyrighted material that are eligible for fair use consideration. They range from the incidental (such as a video maker’s family singing “Happy Birthday”) to parody (a Christian takeoff on the song “Baby Got Back”) to pastiche and collage (finger-dancing to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”).

Better yet, the study contains links to dozens and dozens of videos--many of which are brilliant and hilarious--that demonstrate these various kinds of uses. WARNING: For those of you who've lost an hour or so of office time to the lure of the Sirens of the Island of the YouTube Concert Videos, prepare to land on Calypso's Island of Transformative Use, where you will be tempted by the vicious satire of George Bush Don't Like Black People and the astounding tour de force of History of Dance and the marvelously clever Ten Things I Hate About Commandments. And many, many more.

Kudos to the study's authors, Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, for shedding some coherent light on this vital new realm of fair use.  Pat Aufderheide is a professor in American University’s School of Communication and the director of the school's Center for Social Media.  Peter Jaszi is a professor in American University’s Washington College of Law and co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property.

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The Eighth Circuit handed down its much awaited fantasy baseball decision in CBC Distribution & Marketing, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P., the appeal of the district court's summary judgment in favor of CBC.  CBC had brought a declaratory judgment case in St. Louis to establish its right to use -- without license or compensation -- the names and statistical information of real major league baseball players in its fantasy baseball products.  The players had counterclaimed, maintaining that CBC's fantasy baseball products violated their rights of publicity.

Although the Eighth Circuit concluded that use by CBC of the names and statistics of the players in its commercial fantasy baseball operations satisfied all three elements of the Missouri tort -- namely, (1) use of the player's name as a symbol of his identify, (2) without his consent, and (3) with the intent to obtain a commercial advantage -- it held that this use was nevertheless a "fair use" under the First Amendment.

But of more interest to me -- and to those concerned that right-of-publicity has become the tort of choice for celebrities seeking to avoid the First Amendment barriers to libel and privacy claims -- is the Eighth Circuit's treatment of the controversial  First Amendment test created by the Missouri Supreme Court in the Tony Twist case, which is also the same case that articulated the three elements of the tort claim set forth in the preceding paragraph.

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It used to be pretty simple.  You went to a record store (or mailed in your record-club form), bought an album or CD, and you owned it.  As the owner, you had certain rights--under the First Sale and Fair Use doctrines, you could make a copy for your own personal use, give it away,  share it, even sell it.  Easy, right?

Well, the times they are a'changin'.  Like many people, I haven't bought a new CD in a long time -- I have all my music on my iPod and download it from iTunes (legally, of course).  Now I'm excited about Amazon.com's new MP3 Store, which promises cheaper music downloads, better sound, and--most importantly--the music is DRM-free, meaning I can play it on any device.  Great! 

But not so fast . . .

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Sunday night, my multiverse collapsed upon itself. The Season Six premiere of Family Guy: Blue Harvest has been stalking me all summer.

At Comic-Con International in San Diego, Friday was Star Wars Day and Seth MacFarlane discussed the premiere episode during the Family Guy panel. You may have noticed sketches of Yoda and an Imperial Stormtrooper (along with tagline “May the Force be With You”) on the menu I used to discuss enforcement practices. Two weeks later, I was at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco attending the Intellectual Property Law Section’s activities. While there, I had the opportunity to hear David Anderman Senior Director of Business Affairs (and lead attorney) for Lucasfilm Ltd. speak on a panel entitled “‘The Whole World is Watching!’ Privacy, Copyright and Parental Control in the Age of YouTube, MySpace and Beyond,” sponsored by the Forum on Entertainment and Sports Industries. During Anderman’s portion of the panel he discussed the Lucasfilm approach to enforcement and the Family Guy premier. Anderman explained how Lucasfilm’s relationship with Family Guy exemplifies a realistic approach to enforcement that understands branding and that has evolved with technological changes in content creation and distribution.

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While death has ended James Brown's reign as Hardest Working Man in Show Business, his post-mortem litigation may yet snatch from Elvis the title Hardest Work Corpse in Lawsuits.  His latest appearance was in the Illinois Appellate Court, where he was the headliner in the appeal of a right-of-publicity claim against a company that licenses copyrights for stock photographs.  The case presents an intriguing and somewhat confusing fair-use struggle along the border between right of publicity and copyright law.

The basic facts are straightforward: The main defendant, Corbis Corp., licenses the use of stock photographs and images. Its customers range from newspapers and magazines to advertising agencies.  It had, for example, given Rolling Stone Magazine a license to use certain photographs of James Brown in a profile the magazine published under the title Being James Brown.

So far, so good.  Entirely proper, no cause of action.

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"The law is a seamless web."  Whether Oliver Wendel Holmes or Frederick Maitland first made that enigmatic claim, one way to put it to the test is to set aside the familiar cubbyholes we use to sort out legal issues -- antitrust, copyright, UCC, trusts & estates -- and instead pick a theme.  My fellow blogger Geoff Gerber has picked comic books as his theme.  Study the law of comic books, O Spidey, and you may indeed find yourself in a seamless web.  My current seamless -- or perhaps seamy -- web is the realm of dirty words and dirty pictures, a/k/a, "Censorship & the First Amendment," a course I teach at Washington University School of Law.

But if you'd prefer to earn a Juris Doctor Dre or would rather be sippin' on Gin & Jurisprudence, try the Law of Hip Hop, which traces its origins to the Mack Daddy of "fair use" cases, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose. How can you not love a U.S. Supreme Court decision that quotes these timeless lyrics from Luther "Luke" Campbell's version of the Roy Orbison classic, "Pretty Woman":

Big hairy woman, you need to shave that stuff
Big hairy woman, you know I bet it's tough
Big hairy woman, all that hair it ain't legit
Cause you look like "Cousin It"
Big hairy woman

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While all versions of "fair use" share some of the same 1st Amendment genetic code, the doctrine has one meaning in copyright law, other meanings under trademark law (such as 15 U.S.C. Sections 1115(b)(4) & 1125(c)(4)), and yet other meanings in the field of right of publicity. 

But for those of us who toil in the journalism vineyards -- where the purest and oldest of those DNA strands are found -- the fair use defense actually travels, at least in invasion of privacy lawsuits, under the alias of "newsworthiness."  The scope of that doctrine took center stage in Alvarado v. KOB-TV, a recent 10th Circuit decision affirming a district court's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by two undercover cops against an Albuquerque TV station that broadcast their identities. The  plaintiffs were Albuquerque cops who were named on the news show as suspects in a sexual assault case; in addition, the station aired video footage of each man opening the door to his home after the reporter rang the doorbell.  The cops were eventually cleared of the sexual assault charge, although they continued to receive threats as a result of the broadcast. There was no defamation claim because the station's broadcast was entirely true: they had indeed been charged with a crime.  So instead, they (and their wives) sued the station for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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The recent explosion of media coverage over the California arrival of David Beckham got me thinking about the use -- or more precisely, the "fair use" -- of his name in the title of the motion picture Bend It Like Beckham.  When I first heard that title back at the time of the movie's release in 2002, I had only the vaguest knowledge of David Beckham and made no connection between him and the rest of the title.  Indeed, to this ignorant American the title had mysterious and vaguely erotic connotations, as if it referred to a position in the Kama Sutra.  But the rest of the world, of course, knew immediately that the Beckham in the title was THE most famous athlete on the planet and that the title itself referred to Beckham's amazing skill at scoring on free kicks by “bending" (curving) the ball, which makes it veer out of the goalie's reach.

Knowing Hollywood, we can assume that all of the necessary permissions were signed in triplicate long before the first scene was shot.  But what if Beckham had refused to give permission?  Could you still include the name of the most famous athlete on the planet in the title of your motion picture?  Could you use for free a name that had a commercial endorsement value worth tens of millions of dollars?

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The rulings contained within District Judge Dean Pregerson's opinion dismissing Carol Burnett's lawsuit against Twentieth Century Fox could have been predicted the moment we heard about the case. If ever there were a textbook example of the "fair use" doctrine in copyright law and the "parody" exception in trademark and dilution law, this was it.

Burnett had sued over a short clip from Fox's animated television show, Family Guy. In the scene, Griffin family patriarch Peter Griffin and his pals visit a porn shop. Upon entering the store, Peter remarks that it is cleaner than he expected. One of his friends explains that "Carol Burnett works part time as a janitor."  The scene shifts to an animated figure resembling the Charwoman character from the Carol Burnett Show mopping the floor next to bin of life-size blow-up dolls and  a rack of XXX movies.  Judge Pregerson explains:

"As the 'Charwoman' mops, a slightly altered version of Carol's Theme from The Carol Burnett Show is playing.  The scene switches back to Peter and his friends.  One of the friends remarks, 'You know, when she tugged her ear at the end of that show, she was really saying goodnight to her mom.'  Another friend responds, 'I wonder what she tugged to say goodnight to her dad,' finishing with a comic's explanation, 'Oh!'"

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Books published before tape recorders were invented are now on CD, movies made before television was invented are now on DVD, and newspapers--that most venerable of media formats--are now online.  Each new technology creates the same old headache for the courts, especially in copyright infringement cases: the need to find the appropriate analogy. We've seen it before as courts try to determine whether the contractual right to publish a book also includes the right to publish an ebook or, as in last month's ruling, whether the 1939 grant of "motion picture and television rights" to the distributor of Citizen Kane includes the right to make and distribute the movie in home video form.

And now the latest round in freelance photographer Jerry Greenburg's copyright battle with the National Geographic Society, which has taken an ominous turn for him in this, its tenth year in the federal courts.  His lawsuit is the latest skirmish along the borders of  Section 201(c) of the Copyright Act, which governs the allocation of copyrights in "collective works" such as magazines, anthologies and encyclopedias. His lawsuit--and especially this week's decision by the 11th Circuit in Greenburg v. National Geographic Society vacating his $400,000 judgment--is an excellent example of the judiciary's ongoing struggle to apply to new technology the legal principles that were forged on old technology.

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Some days, keeping watch along the fair use border makes you feel like Paris Hilton inside the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.  Other days you feel like a pledge at a wild Delta House frat party in Animal House.  Today is a Delta day, brought to you by the good jurists of the Seventh and Ninth Circuit.  To paraphrase Herman Melville, Call me Flounder.

We begin with the magical opening paragraph of Circuit Judge Diane Woods' opinion in the Seventh Circuit's recent copyright decision in JCW Investments, Inc. v. Novelty, Inc.:

Meet Pull My Finger Fred.  He is a white, middle-aged, overweight man with black hair and a receding hairline, sitting in an armchair wearing a white tank top and blue pants.  Fred is a plush doll and when one squeezes Fred's extended finger on his right hand, he farts.  He also makes somewhat crude, somewhat funny statements about the bodily noises he emits, such as "Did somebody step in a duck?" or "Silent but deadly."

And we continue with a bevvy of beautiful babes in the buff, delivered compliments of a Google "Image Search" for the phrase "Perfect 10" that is the subject of the Ninth Circuit's recent copyright opinion in Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com.  These two cases -- whose fact patterns could have been selected by the cast of Porky's -- shed important light on two fair use issues.

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