¶ … Pattern: Copyright Infringement
With copyright infringement becoming an increasingly common issue in the wired world, it has become all the more important to discuss the situations where infringement occurs out of territory. According to U.S. copyright infringement laws, the courts can only decide a case where the infringement occurred within the U.S. territory and all other cases would be dismissed on grounds of forums non-conveniens. But in the world of Internet, we can no longer allow such strict territorial treatment in cases of copyright infringement because there is a good chance now more than ever before that infringement would occur abroad especially in the case of music and other creative arts. We shall now discuss a hypothetical case in the light of real precedents and apply our laws to see how such a case would be decided.
Bill...
citizen residing in Germany. He creates some tunes online and has them copyrighted in the U.S. When he publishes his work online on a German site, many people download his work without permission. He goes to a U.S. court and files a complaint against such blatant violation of copyright law. The problem that now occurs is that U.S. courts are not willing to decide the case since none of the downloads occurred in the U.S.
The first important consideration in this case would be choice of law. According to law, there can be several choices of law when a case involving foreign country appears. The first rule is that of lex fori, which postulates that, a court should choose the law of the country where the case is being heard and decided. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals adheres to this rule. The other important rule in our hypothetical case…
