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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

In order to establish this referential background, this Note begins in Part I with a look at historic new use cases focusing on whether a grant of dramatic rights included motion picture rights, whether a grant of silent motion picture rights included rights to talkies, and whether motion picture rights included television rights. Part I continues with a survey of the current landscape and provides an overview of cases involving a grant of motion picture or television rights seeking to include videocassette rights when the original contract was signed prior to the invention or popularization of the video cassette recorder ("VCR"). Part II provides an in-depth legal analysis of the cases focusing on traditional tools of contract construction as well as alternative approaches that have been employed in seeking to resolve the new use issue. This section also includes an examination of both the articulated and unarticulated reasoning of the courts. Part III discusses the crucial issue of the distribution of the windfall. Part IV offers a proposal for the disposition of future cases based on the equities and realities of the entertainment industry as well as the failure of past solutions. It is the contention of this Note that the past history of judicial decisions has not produced a fair and predictable solution on which contracting parties can rely, and that it is therefore necessary to enact a statutory resolution which will provide the requisite fairness and predictability while promoting the purpose of copyright.

Keywords

Intellectual Property Law, Copyright, Contracts, Employees, Employment, Technology

Disciplines

Contracts | Intellectual Property Law | Law | Science and Technology Law

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