VIVA LAS VEGAS!!!

TIFFANY DESIGN, INC. V. RENO-TAHOE SPECIALITY, INC.

LIBM 6320

SPRING, 2012BY:

TONYA C

ORLEY

TIFFANY DESIGN, INC. V. RENO-TAHOE SPECIALTY, INC.

(Google Images, 2012)

PLAINTIFFTiffany Design, Inc.

DEFENDENT

Reno-Tahoe Specialty, Inc.

COPYRIGHT ISSUE

Tbe city of Las Vegas, Nevada is known throughout the world for its brightly lit hotels and casinos. Tiffany Design filed a copyright infringement suit alleging the unauthorized copying of postcard and graphic art depictions of this desert town.

http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~onsrud/Cases/HTML

LAWSSection 106 of the Copyright Law of the United

States grants right to a copyright owner:

The right to reproduce the work The right to prepare derivative works based

upon the workThe right to distribute copies of the work to the

publicThe right to perform the work publiclyThe right to display the work publicly

The right to perform the work publicly, by means of digital audio transmission

The rights are not without limit, however, as they are specifically limited by “fair use” and several other specific limitations set for in the Copyright

Law. (Court, 2012)

LAWS cont’dLAWS cont’d

Section 107 of the Copyright Law of the United States grants four fair use factors:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a

commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposed;

The nature of the copyrighted workThe amount and substantiality of the

portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

(Court, 2012)

THE CASEPlaintiff in Tiffany makes videos, calendars, postcards, and so on, one of which features an original aerial photograph of the Las Vegas strip at night.

Defendant bought plaintiff’s postcard, scanned the Las Vegas image into a digital photo-editing program and electronically copies several of the buildings from that image to paste into its own Las Vegas postcard.

Plaintiff moved for summary judgment of liability as to both the intermediate scanning of the image and the final end product.

(Clarida, 2000)

CONCLUSIONThe court concluded that the scanning-in of the photograph was infringement as a matter of law and granted summary judgment for the plaintiff, but refused to grant summary judgment as to the defendant’s finished postcard because there was a genuine issue of fact as to whether it was substantially similar to plaintiff’s original card.

(Court, 2012)

REFLECTIONIt appears that this decision will not excuse all photographic copying. A court may break down the activity and look to each step in isolation. This has been the practice of the courts in cases where various steps of an infringement are carried out by different parties.

As digital scanning becomes more prevalent, this case could prove significant far beyond its own facts.

(Clarida, 2000)

Case Summaries. (2012, February 29). Retrieved from Columbia University Libraries/Information Services: http://copyright,columbia.edu/copyright/fair=use/case /summaries

Clarida. R. (2000, July 21). Copyright Law: computers and Intermediate Copying. /retrieved from http://www.ell.com/articles/copyright-law-computers-and-intermediate-copying

Google Images. (2012, February 29)

United States Court Records. (1999, July). Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~onsrud/Cases/HTML_Tiffany_design_Link.htm