Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s ruling of fair use in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC, and held that a verbatim and non-transformative taking in the presence of an actual or potential licensing market fatally undermined the defense.
Even in industries unrelated to computers, mobile devices, software, and source code, the court’s broad pronouncement that “[t]here is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform†is both powerful and beneficial to creators and licensors of copyrighted content. DMLA’s amicus brief with the support of the coalition of Visual Artists– and one of many amicus briefs in this hotly contested case– helped explain to the court of appeals the importance of licensing markets in fair use cases in general. Ultimately DMLA supported the winning argument and contributed to the creation of appellate-level precedent that will help image licensors everywhere in responding to many infringement claims, as it turns on harm to the licensing market.
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