3 Count: Waiting… Waiting…

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1: Brandis Sits on Digital Copyright Review Until 2014

First off today, Josh Taylor at ZDNet reports that, in Australia, the nation’s Attorney-General, George Brandis, has said that his office will not respond to a review of the Copyright Act until early 2014 and, more importantly, indicated that he will limit any proposed changes to the law.

The review was commissioned by the government in August 2012 and Brandis has until February 2014 to complete it. However, in Senate Question Time, Brandis indicated that, while he will propose several changes they will be limited as he also reaffirmed his commitment to copyright industries.

Among the changes Brandis said he would propose were a flexible fair use system, limiting remedies for orphan works (works where the copyright holder is unknown) and reforming broadcasting exemptions.

2: Rivals Can Create Copycat Software Through Testing Developers’ Software and Interpreting Their User Manuals, Rules UK Court

Next up today, Out-Law.com writes that an appeals court in the UK has ruled that software developers can replicate the functionality of a competing application without infringing copyright, so long as no underlying code, images or other copyrightable works were used.

The court ruled that such elements of software are just “intellectual creations” and are not the expressions of an idea, therefore, they are not copyrightable under UK law. The court also ruled that a software developer can not use their terms of service to prevent a legitimate user from using the software to observe, study or test it for the purpose of replicating its functionality.

The case pitted SAS Institute against World Programming Limited, both of which are software development companies in the country.

3: Warner Bros Wants “Wasteful” ‘Trouble With The Curve’ Copyright Case Tossed

Finally today, Dominic Patten at Deadline.com reports that Warner Brothers is asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against them over the baseball film “Trouble with the Curve”.

The lawsuit was filed Ryan Brooks and Gold Glove Productions, which allege that the film was stolen from their earlier works. However, Warner has hit back calling the lawsuit “salacious” and said that there is significant evidence that the film was written by its credited author, Randy Brown.

The motion for a summary judgment is unusual at this phase, barely two months since original filing, but Warner says that it feels that it is appropriate as this is an “easy case” with “extensive, indisputable evidence” to Brown’s authorship.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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