Keywords : anticommons, copyright, intellectual property, Lockean Proviso, patent, property rights, state of nature, trademark, utilitarian theory

National governments are also weighing in on the issue. The UK government aims this April to make text-mining for non-commercial purposes exempt from copyright, allowing academics to mine any content they have paid for.

“Our plan is just to wait for the copyright exemption to come into law in the United Kingdom so we can do our own content-mining our own way, on our own platform, with our own tools,” says Mounce. “Our project plans to mine Elsevier’s content, but we neither want nor need the restricted service they are announcing here.”

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ No. 11 – 697

These rights are quali- fied, however, by the application of various limitations set forth in the next several sections of the Act, §§107 through 122. Those sections, typically entitled “Limitations on exclusive rights,” include, for example, the principle of “fair use” (§107), permission for limited library archival reproduction, (§108), and the doctrine at issue here, the “first sale” doctrine (§109)

Section 106 of the Copyright Act grants “the owner of copyright under this title” certain “exclusive rights,” including the right “to distribute copies . . . of the copy- righted work to th e public by sale or other transfer of ownership.” 17 U. S. C. §106(3)

i t i s b e y o n d d i s p u t e t h a t c o m p i l a t i o n s o f f a c t s a r e w i t h i n t h e s u b j e c t m a t t e r o f c o p y r i g h t . C o m p i l a t i o n s w e r e e x p r e s s l y m e n t i o n e d i n t h e C o p y r i g h t A c t o f 1 9 0 9 , a n d a g a i n i n t h e C o p y r i g h t A c t o f 1 9 7 6

T h i s c a s e r e q u i r e s u s t o c l a r i f y t h e e x t e n t o f c o p y r i g h t p r o t e c t i o n a v a i l a b l e t o t e l e p h o n e d i r e c t o r y w h i t e p a g e s

Alexander v. Haley, 460 F.Supp. 40 (S.D.N.Y. 1978)

your use of the Website will not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any third party

The copyright extension Clinton signed will expire in five years. Copyright holders like the Disney Corp. and the Gershwin estate have a strong incentive to try to extend copyright extension yet further into the future. But with the emergence of the Internet as a political organizing tool, opponents of copyright extension will be much better prepared. The question for the coming legislative battle on copyright is who will prevail: those who would profit from continuing to lock up the great works of the 20th century, or those who believe Bugs Bunny should be as freely available for reuse as Little Red Riding Hood.