Fourteenth Amendment. The constitutional amendment, ratified in 1868, whose primary provisions effectively apply the Bill of Rights to the states by prohibiting states from denying due process and equal protection and from abridging the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizenship. • The amendment also gave Congress the power to enforce these provisions, leading to legislation […]
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An act that obstructs justice or attacks the integrity of the court. • A criminal-contempt pro-ceeding is punitive in nature. The purpose of criminal-contempt proceedings is to punish repeated or aggravated failure to comply with a court order. All the protections of criminal law and procedure apply, and the commitment must be for a definite
copyright application. A written request for copyright protection made by a work’s creator, filed with the U.S. Copyright Office and accompanied by a filing fee and either a deposit copy of the work or approved identifying material. • A registrant who does not meet the deposit requirement of the Copyright Act of 1976 risks losing
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rule of doubt. 1. Copyright. The doctrine that unreadable or incomprehensible identifying material deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office may not be protected under copyright law because it cannot be easily examined to determine whether it qualifies. • This rule usu. applies to computer object code. Unlike a certificate of registration, a filing under the
dilution doctrine. Trademarks. The rule protecting a trademark from a deterioration in strength, as when a person seeks to use the mark for an unrelated product.
misappropriation, n. 1. The application of another’s property or money dishonestly to one’s own use. See EMBEZZLEMENT. Cf. APPROPRIATION; EXPROPRIATION. 2. Intellectual property. The common-law tort of using the noncopyrightable information or ideas that an organization collects and disseminates for a profit to compete unfairly against that organization, or copying a work whose creator has
homicidium (hom-[schwa]-sI-dee-[schwa]m), n. [Latin “felling of a person”] Homicide. homicidium ex casu (eks kay-s[y]oo). Homicide by accident. See ACCIDENTAL KILLING. homicidium ex justitia (eks j[schwa]s-tish-ee-[schwa]). Homicide in the administration of justice, or in the carrying out of a legal sentence. See justifiable homicide (2) under HOMICIDE. homicidium ex necessitate (eks n[schwa]-ses-i-tay-tee). Homicide from inevitable necessity,
joint-check rule. The principle that, when an owner or general contractor issues a check that is made jointly payable to a subcontractor and the subcontractor’s materialman, the materialman’s indorsement on the check certifies that it has been paid all amounts due to it, up to the amount of the check. • This rule protects the
anticircumvention device. Copyright. An apparatus designed to prevent bypassing, avoiding, removing, deacti-vating, or impairing a technological measure that controls access to a work protected by copyright; an apparatus in a media player or receiver, such as a DVD player or a TV satellite dish, designed to prevent unauthorized use or duplication of copyrighted material.
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lapping. An embezzlement technique by which an employee takes funds from one customer’s accounts receivable and covers it by using a second customer’s payment to pay the first account, then a third customer’s payment to pay the second account, and so on. [Cases: Embezzlement 12. C.J.S. Embezzlement § 26.]