Fair Use and Intellectual Property: Defending the Balance

Most people assume that consumers have a fair use right to time shift television to watch at a later time.

At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

Directory of information on Netherlands entertainment industry organizations' suit against Kazaa (a P2P software company) for the Dutch equivalent of contributory copyright infringement.

On February 1 2007 EFF warned the Chicago Auto Show to back off attempts to muzzle protestors who posted a parody of the show's website.

On June 20 2006 EFF filed an amicus brief arguing that a battle between Internet real estate services over copyrighted images should not threaten the rights of users to surf webpages and send emails anonymously.

EFF has asked a federal court to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming.

This is one of the thousands of cases filed by RIAA member companies against individuals for P2P file sharing. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendant asking the court to reject the recording industry's claims that file sharing infringes the distribution right.

On December 22 2008 GateHouse Media sued the New York Times alleging that the "hyper-local" news aggregation pages on the New York Times-owned site Boston.com infringed its copyright and trademark rights.

EFF defended a target of a recording industry lawsuit filing a brief in a New York district court urging the judge to allow the man to fight back with counterclaims of his own.

EFF filed suit against Apple Inc. to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial public Internet "wiki" site known as Bluwiki.

EFF has teamed up with the law firm of Winston & Strawn to represent Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen authors of The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City as well as their publisher Process Media in a petition to cancel the registration of bogus trademarks

EFF along with Public Citizen and Public Knowledge are urging a U.S. court of appeals to reject jewelry-maker Tiffany's attempt to rewrite trademark law and create new barriers for online commerce and communication.

Lexmark one of the largest makers of laser printers is a believer in the "give away the razors but charge them for the blades" tactic counting on the fact that consumers routinely underestimate "life cyle costs" for products like printers.

In 2005, Macrovision sued Sima to block the sale of the Sima CopyThis! (CT-1, CT-Q1, CT-100, CT-2, CT-200) and GoDVD (SCC, and SCC-2) products, which are designed to digitize analog video, such as the analog video outputs of DVD players and analog VCRs.

In Quanta v. LG Electronics, the Supreme Court has been asked to reaffirm the patent exhaustion doctrine, which entitles consumers to use, repair, or resell patented products that they have purchased.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting back against Uri Geller -- the "paranormalist" famous for seemingly bending spoons with his mind -- on behalf of a YouTube critic who was silenced by Geller's baseless copyright claims.

EFF urged a federal court to return two domain names seized in the U.S. government's fundamentally flawed anti-infringement campaign.

EFF formally requested the preservation of the data seized when the U.S.

EFF has urged a federal judge to reject arguments from Warner Brothers Entertainment claiming that the company’s automated scheme to send copyright infringement notices absolves it of responsibility for the system’s major flaws.  In this case, Warner is accused of sending thousa

Dajaz1.com, a website dedicated to hip hop music and culture, was seized by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security over the 2010 Thanksgiving weekend.  For over a year, visitors could not get access to any content on the blog.  However, as w

Opening the (Garage) Door to Free Competition

Fighting the abuse of copyright law to stifle competition, EFF helped Skylink score an important victory in the Federal Circuit that puts much-needed limits on the controversial "anti-circumvention" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Chamberlain, the manufacturer of garage doors, invoked the provision to stop Skylink from selling a "universal" remote control that works with Chamberlain garage doors. The court rejected Chamberlain's claims, noting that if it adopted the company's interpretation of the DMCA, it would threaten many legitimate uses of software within electronic and computer products – something the law aims to protect.

EFF protected innovation and fair use by defending "intermediate" copying. Major motion picture studies filed a copyright infringement suit against two companies that made and distributed copies of movies with sexual and violent content removed. To make those copies, the companies first made an initial, "intermediate" copy of the entire movie, which the MPAA alleged were also infringing. Because such copies are crucial to the process of creating new works, EFF filed an amicus brief arguing that those copies were legal if the final copies were as well. The MPAA then backed off and withdrew its "intermediate copying" argument in front of the judge.

This Song Belongs to You and Me

Standing up for the public's right to make legal, fair uses of copyrighted material, EFF successfully defended the creators of a parody flash animation piece using Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" - and uncovered evidence that the classic folk song is in fact already part of the public domain.

The English Language Belongs to Everyone

Fighting the over-reach of trademark law, EFF signed on as co-counsel to a small travel services company, JSL, after credit card giant Visa convinced a federal court in Las Vegas to prevent the company from using the domain name "evisa.com." In December of 2003, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with EFF that JSL's use of the generic term "visa" does not threaten or "dilute" Visa's trademark for credit cards, keeping the word in the dictionary (and domain name system servers) for now.

EFF protected website owners free speech rights against overreaching trademark claims.

Taxes.com showed up frequently in search engine results for "J.K. Harris," a chief competitor criticized on the website. J.K. Harris asked a federal court to deem this a violation of trademark law. Instead, the court rejected the claim and embraced EFF's arguments, pointing out that the information on the pages was completely truthful and useful to consumers.

EFF helped preserve the legal protections for actually private websites while protecting your right to read public websites.

This case involved a lawsuit against DirecTV for accessing the public website of anti-DirecTV activists run by plaintiff Michael Snow. The website had a banner and purported Terms of Service forbidding DirecTV representatives from entering the site or using its message board, but it was configured such that anyone in the public could enter the site, create a profile, and use the board. Setting aside a privacy-destroying lower court decision, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with EFF's arguments and ruled that web sites are protected by the Stored Communications Act, except when they are configured to be readily accessible to the general public.

EFF urged a federal judge to protect fair use of news coverage and reject the Associated Press’ (AP’s) dangerously narrow view of what is “transformative” in a copyright court battle over a news-tracking service.

A group of Reddit “gaymers” fought back with EFF's help to protect the name of their online forum after a website operator managed to register the term as a trademark and then claimed the group’s Reddit forum infringed his trademark rights.  In a petition filed with the U.S.

Note: There are two parts for the case page for Authors Guild v. Google.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Sony v. Universal Studios (aka the Betamax case) is a landmark copyright precedent that has sheltered a wide array of technology innovators from lawsuits at the hands of the entertainment industries.

In this case, EFF backed Internet service providers (ISPs) in an effort to quash subpoenas issued in a predatory lawsuit over the alleged illegal downloading of adult material.  The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and the ACLU of the Nation’s Capitol joined EFF in the amicus brief, argu

Background of the HathiTrust

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) limits the circumvention of software that's designed to restrict access to copyrighted works. Unfortunately, such a blanket restriction can chill competition, free speech, and fair use.

EFF established that the FCC and Hollywood don't control your TiVo - you do.

The FCC's "broadcast flag" mandate would have given copyright holders and the government a veto over development and use of digital television tuners. Only technologies crippled by copy protection would have been legal. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded, as EFF and a coalition of public interest groups had argued, that the FCC lacked authority to regulate what happens inside your TV or computer once it has received a broadcast signal.

Like many other companies that host content on behalf of users, video-hosting service Veoh has been bedeviled by copyright lawsuits.

In the U.S., two copyrights generally exist for every song you hear on the radio or online. One relates to the underlying musical work (think sheet music). It typically belongs to a music publisher or songwriter.

"Technical standards incorporated into law are some of the most important rules of our modern society. In a democracy, the people must have the right to read, know, and speak about the laws by which we choose to govern ourselves.”

EFF supported Viacom in a lawsuit over a parody of a popular online video called “What What (In the Butt),” arguing that South Park’s reimagining of the work is a clear case of fair use and that the district court’s early dismissal of the case was correct.

Note: There are two parts for the case page for Authors Guild v.

Aereo was a company that let users watch local channels by renting their own small antenna located at the Aereo facility, with the signal from the antenna sent over the Internet to that single user.  In a lawsuit, TV networks argued that this constituted a public pe

Google v Equustek involves a legal challenge to an extraterritorial order from a Canadian court. EFF intervened in the case after a trial court ruled in June that Google must remove links to full websites that contained pages selling a product that allegedly infringed trade secret rights.