Copyright Act of 1976. A major revision of U.S. copyright law, extending the term of protection to the life of the author plus 50 years, measured from the date of creation; greatly expanding the types of works that qualify for protection; dropping the requirement that the work be published before it can be protected; making […]
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sovereign state. 1. A state that possesses an independent existence, being complete in itself, without being merely part of a larger whole to whose government it is subject. 2. A political community whose members are bound together by the tie of common subjection to some central authority, whose commands those members must obey. — Also
Copyright. A judicially created test for determining whether substantial similarity exists between two works in an action for infringement. • In the first step, the court dissects the copy-righted work’s structure and isolates each level of abstraction or generality (abstraction test). In the second step, the court examines each level of abstraction and separates out
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derivative, adj. Copyright. Of, relating to, or constituting a work that is taken from, translated from, adapted from, or in some way further developed from a previous work. • Copyright protection includes the exclusive right in derivative works, such as a screenplay adapted from a book, or a variant musical arrangement. See derivative work under
condemnee (kon-dem-nee). One whose property is expropriated for public use or taken by a public-works project.
pure theory. The philosophy of Hans Kelsen, in which he contends that a legal system must be “pure” — that is, self-supporting and not dependent on extralegal values. • Kelsen’s theory, set out in such works as General Theory of Law and the State (1945) and The Pure Theory of Law (1934), maintains that laws
Paris Additional Act. Copyright. An 1896 amendment to the Berne Convention extending copyright protection to photographs as derivative works.
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Copyright. A means of comparing copyrighted material with material that allegedly infringes the copyright by examining whether the actual substance has been copied or whether the two works merely share the same abstract ideas. • The primary authority for the abstractions test is Judge Learned Hand’s opinion in Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d
abstraction-filtration-comparison test. Copyright. A judicially created test for determining whether substantial similarity exists between two works in an action for infringement. • In the first step, the court dissects the copy-righted work’s structure and isolates each level of abstraction or generality (abstraction test). In the second step, the court examines each level of abstraction and
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virtue ethics. Ethics. An ethical theory that focuses on the character of the actor rather than on the nature of the act or its consequences. • This approach received its first and perhaps its fullest expression in the works of Aristotle, esp. in his Ethics. Cf. CONSEQUENTIALISM.