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The scènes à faire doctrine is one of several "limiting principles" judges apply during the infringement analysis to limit the scope of protection for certain elements of an expressive work. Though first applied in the context of literary works and motion pictures, the doctrine has extended to new contexts, playing an important role in the adjudication of functional works and signaling the doctrine's utility as a scoping mechanism across different subject matter. Despite its practical and conceptual importance, the scènes à faire doctrine remains misunderstood. Because the doctrine offers the ability to integrate comparatively concrete principles and details into copyright's infringement analysis, it is especially important to develop a more accurate understanding of the doctrine's proper scope. This Article seeks to offer a more accurate and grounded understanding of the doctrine's origins and purpose. Doing so helps disentangle the doctrine from other limiting doctrines with which it is often combined, conflated, and confused. By articulating ways in which the discourse has gone astray and the risks undermining the doctrine, this Article seeks to reaffirm the doctrine's vitality and cohesion as a flexible and practical tool in the judicial toolkit for nonidentical copyright infringement cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most students who study intellectual property in law school read Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., (1) and I would guess that those who read it probably remember it, even years [...]

Copyright law is surprisingly hard. Copyright does not do what laypeople think it does, nor do its terms mean what laypeople expect. Copyright also possesses systemic indeterminacy about what it protects and the extent of that protection. For laypeople, copyright law is decidedly "user-unfriendly." Nonetheless, copyright law reserves for lay jurors its most-litigated, most difficult, and most consequential question at trial: whether works are "substantially similar" and thus infringing. Many have criticized this allocation because in the context of copyright law, juries effectively have the power to expand or contract owners' rights with little oversight or correction. But blaming the jury obscures other systemic factors and overlooks mistakes made by judges and litigants (as well as juries). In short, don't blame the jurors, blame the game. To evaluate and improve the jury's role in copyright litigation, we must look at--but also beyond--the jury and consider systemic sources of error, starting with complexities built into copyright itself. This Article focuses on copyright's jury per se and begins to bridge the gap between copyright scholarship and the methodologically diverse generalist jury literature. Numerous high-profile jury trials underscore the jury's importance for copyright policy, yet scholars have neglected to consider the jury's role in light of existing generalist scholarship. Jury-Related Errors in Copyright profiles copyright's user-unfriendliness and explores its impact by examining cases involving jury-related errors. It proposes a framework for considering reforms, arguing that copyright law must be attuned to what juries need to accomplish their tasks (via a "jury-centric" approach) as well as heeding how juries' verdicts effectuate--or distort--copyright's policy aims (using a "system-centric" approach). More scholarship is needed to develop future reforms but this Article provides a necessary starting point by acknowledging copyright law's current user-unfriendliness and highlighting the significant impact of jury-related errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. Several Areas of Law Regulate Sponsorship and Deception Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) empowers the FTC to take action against deceptive or unfair actions [...]

This qualitative empirical research project studies Seattle's craft brewing industry as a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that displays widespread collaboration and innovation. Drawing on data collected in 22 face-to-face formal interviews conducted with industry participants, the Article explores the community's attitudes, practices, and norms with respect to collaboration and intellectual property (IP). It joins a growing body of qualitative empirical IP scholarship that maps misalignments between law and practice "on the ground," seeking to offer a more accurate and pluralistic account of an innovative industry. The craft brewing community in Seattle cooperates extensively while continuing to compete actively for consumers. In service of this collaborative ethos, brewers often quote, and seem to live by the motto, "a rising tide lifts all boats:" helping each other helps the group as a whole. These interviews help frame an important inquiry--why do brewers cooperate so extensively when they would be expected to compete with each other, especially as the industry only grows more crowded and, in theory, more competitive? This Article offers, if not the answers, at least some plausible explanations of craft brewing's cooperative spirit. IP's focus on exclusive rights does little to explain craft breweries' cooperation, but organizational theory posits that under certain circumstances competitors find it valuable to engage in "coopetition," or behavior that is simultaneously competitive and cooperative. Coopetition is likely to arise in emerging markets and also when a group shares a putative enemy, as many craft brewers feel they do with "Big Beer." Coopetition strengthens when "collective oppositional identity" forms. Yet craft breweries in Seattle provide examples of commitments to resource-sharing and collaboration that transcend the simplest forms of coopetition and call for a more textured account of the interplay between innovation, group belonging, and IP. The study is timely: the craft brewing industry nationally has witnessed nearconstant growth for over a decade, along with a recent wave of mergers and consolidation. These market factors make it a particularly charged time to be collecting views about craft beer's culture and what it means to belong to it. These interviews provide evidence that collective identity and belonging can have powerful but underappreciated implications for theorizing innovation and for ownership and enforcement of IP rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author comments on the article "Disruption and Deference" by Olivier Sylvain within the issue related to the decision of the U.S. Supreme court in the case American Broadcasting Cos. Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. on the copyright. Topics discussed include the transmit clause of the U.S. Copyright Act which changed media consumption, the scope of judicial deference and the copyright law, administrative law, and telecommunications law of the U.S.

The article reflects the need of protecting the fictional characters like James Bond, Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes under the copyright law. It discusses the criteria of protecting the characters by tracing their evolution in the literary history. Topics discussed include purpose of copyright of the literary characters, tests for character copyrightability and complexity and rise of characters.