Re: Arbitrate Infringement?

On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, Michael Bradley <michael[_at_]vision-soft.com> wrote:
>
> Given an ordinary arbitration clause ("all disputes will be
> arbitrated"), can a copyright infringement complaint be arbitrated,
> or must it go the federal court?

(previous helpful replies omitted)

Take note of a pair of very important principles from the ADR field:

First, few arbitration clauses are "ordinary." The language of the agreement to arbitrate defines the scope of the matters that are arbitrable. For example, an agreement to arbitrate disputes "arising under" a certain contract may have a different (and narrower) scope than an agreement to arbitrate disputes "arising under or related to" that same contract. See, for example, Tracer Research Corp. v. National Environmental Services Co., 42 F.3d 1292 (9th Cir. 1994).

Second, in light of your analysis of the first issue, your facts may or may not give rise to an arbitrable claim. As a generic matter, as others have pointed out, claims of copyright infringement may be arbitrable, but whether a particular claim of copyright infringement is arbitrable depends, as these things often do, on the facts of the case.

Mike Madison
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Michael Madison
Teaching Fellow, Harvard Law School
mmadison[_at_]law.harvard.edu
http://www.netcom.com/~mmadison/index.htm 617.496.4531 Received on Tue Oct 14 1997 - 20:38:55 GMT