Practice Area
briefings

sponsored content graciously presented by Copyright Clearance Center

There’s no question that the use of published content inside businesses is proliferating at a rapid pace. According to research and advisory firm Outsell Inc., business professionals share copyrighted materials at an average rate of 34 times per week.

This sharing of information is critical to firms of all sizes that depend on constant innovation. Yet more than half (56 percent) of those surveyed either don’t have a copyright policy, don’t know if they do or don’t know what’s in it. What’s more, nearly a third say they share information with their customers and clients weekly.

The survey also revealed that more
than half (52 percent) of individual
contributors believe that information
obtained at no charge can be shared
without permission. That is, if they
find it on the Internet, they can do
with it whatever they want. And 48
percent cut and paste copyrighted
content directly into their emails,
often without obtaining permission.*
The above trends should be cause
for some concern to readers of this
magazine as in-house counsel. How
do your employees measure up? Is
your organization at risk for copy-
right infringement? In this article, I’ll
cover some of the relevant funda-
mentals of copyright law in the Unit-
ed States, including what’s protected,
fair use and copyright infringement,
including a couple of landmark cases
relevant to businesses. Finally, I’ll dis-
cuss ways you can address copyright
compliance within your organization
without interrupting the valuable
exchange of published information
by employees.

Copyright basics

What better place to start a discussion
about copyright in the United States
than the US Constitution? Specifi-
cally, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.
Think back to law school for this one.
“Congress shall have power . . . . to
promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries.” That’s
where it began. Under that provision
of the Constitution, both patent law
and copyright law have been devel-
oped in the United States over the
past 225 years.

Copyright law grants copyright holders exclusive rights to their works and it now protects works created on or after January 1, 1978, (which is the effective date of the current Copyright Act) until 70 years after the author’s death. (Copyrights in older works last somewhat less long.) Imagine that somebody, who is currently in her twenties, creates a work and dies at the ripe old age of 80, which is