It was ages ago that several folks on this list discussed whether the
record rental amendment to Section 109 of the U.S. Copyright Act (the
codification of the first sale doctrine) required copyright owner
permission to rent all sound recordings or only sound recordings
containing musical compositions. Since then, I have been called upon
to give legal advice three times on that very issue and concluded
that only sound recordings of musical works required the copyright
owner's permission to rent, so that rental of sound recordings of
literary works (e.g. audio books) without the was still permissible,
even over the objection of the copyright owner. Last Friday, the
Sixth Circuit agreed with my position (fortunately, so I don't have
to correct my legal advice). They did not cover all the reasons I had
used, but at least came to the same result. The dissent was
disappointing, as was the murkiness left in the trademark aspects of
the case, which was remanded.
If I recall correctly, the ruling is consistent with the majority view from this list, which may still be floating around the ether. I have blogged the Brilliance Audio ruling at http://interactionlaw.com/wordpress/2007/01/29/right-to-rent-audiobooks/
You can obtain a copy of the decision from there.
John
John T. Mitchell
http://interactionlaw.com
Received on Wed Jan 31 2007 - 03:20:14 GMT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:57 GMT