two statutes are joined by common purposes and should be interpreted harmoniously with one another. Indeed, the Court has twice read the Copyright Act as if it included language that actually appears in the Patent Act.[1]
In Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,[2] the Court considered whether Sony, the manufacturer of the “Betamax” video cassette recorder (“VCR”), was contributorily liable for incidents of copyright infringement that occurred when Betamax owners recorded copyrighted television programming without permission. To answer that question, the Court (per Justice Stevens) shifted the rhetorical landscape from copyright law to patent law, based on their “historic kinship.”[3] The Patent Act, the Court observed, implicitly excused the sale of “a staple article or commodity of commerce suitable for substantial noninfringing use”[4] from the scope of liability for patent infringement. The Court adopted this rule as a matter of copyright law, despite the absence of any comparable language in the text of the Copyright Act.[5] Because the Betamax VCR was capable of at least two non-infringing uses (authorized recording and “time-shifting,” which the Court determined to be a fair use even if unauthorized),[6] it qualified as a “staple article of commerce.” Therefore, the Court concluded, “Sony’s sale of such equipment to the general public does not constitute contributory infringement of respondents’ copyrights.”[7]
Twenty years after Sony, the Court again considered the issue of secondary liability for the manufacturer of a copying technology. The question in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.[8] was whether the producers of the Grokster and Morpheus file-sharing software programs were secondarily liable for copyright infringements by users of those programs. Lower courts, relying on Sony and then-existing doctrines of secondary liability, held that they were not.[9]
- ↑ The Court’s analytical approach in these cases might readily be criticized, of course. See, e.g., William D. Popkin, Statutes in Court: The History and Theory of Statutory Interpretation 183–85 (1999) (arguing that different statutes are essentially the products of different authors writing for different audiences, and should not be interpreted as the work of a single creator); Peter S. Menell & David Nimmer, Unwinding Sony, 95 Cal. L. Rev. 941, 981–82 (2007) (criticizing Court’s borrowing of patent concepts when construing the Copyright Act).
- ↑ 464 U.S. 417 (1984).
- ↑ Id. at 439.
- ↑ 35 U.S.C. § 271(c) (1982).
- ↑ Sony, 464 U.S. at 442. The Court held that “the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” Id.
- ↑ See id. at 443–47 (noting approval or acquiescence by many large copyright holders in public taping of their broadcasts), 447–55 (finding “time-shifting,” or the recording of a broadcast for a single viewing at a later time, to be noninfringing under fair use doctrine).
- ↑ Id. at 456.
- ↑ 545 U.S. 913 (2005).
- ↑ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 380 F.3d 1154, 1162–66 (9th Cir. 2004), rev’d, 545 U.S. 913 (2005).
