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CANONICAL REPORTER · LANDMARK DECISIONS & DOSSIERS

The Reporter

From Campbell v. Acuff-Rose to Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, explore curated case dossiers complete with procedural postures, core holdings, judicial reasoning, and downstream precedential influence.

Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

A commercial parody may qualify as fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. The commercial nature of a secondary use does not create an automatic presumption against fair use; rather, the more transformative the new work, the less will be the significance of commercialism under Factor 1.

Commerciality does not bar fair use if the secondary work is transformative.
Parody provides social commentary by targeting the original work.
17 U.S.C. § 107(1)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

The Andy Warhol Foundation's commercial licensing of 'Orange Prince' to Condé Nast does not qualify as fair use under Factor 1. When an original work and a secondary use share substantially the same commercial purpose, Factor 1 weighs against fair use unless there is an independent transformative justification.

Factor 1 turns on the specific commercial use, not the general artistic merit.
New meaning or message alone does not guarantee fair use if the secondary work shares the same commercial purpose.
17 U.S.C. § 107(1)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

Google's copying of the Java API declaring code was fair use as a matter of law. Reimplementation of declaring code to enable programmer skill portability in a novel computing environment satisfies the transformative purposes of copyright.

Declaring code is thin in copyright protection due to its functional interface nature.
Copying headers to allow developer portability is transformative fair use.
17 U.S.C. § 107
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United States Court of Appeals for the Second CircuitCAUTION

Authors Guild v. Google, Inc.

804 F.3d 202 (2d Cir. 2015)

Google's mass scanning of books to create a full-text searchable database and display snippets is transformative fair use. Non-expressive computational indexing provides enormous public benefit without creating a market substitute.

Non-expressive computational scanning is highly transformative.
Search indexes do not create commercial market substitutes for books.
17 U.S.C. § 107(1)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

The claims are patent-ineligible because they target an abstract idea (intermediated settlement) and fail to provide an 'inventive concept' that transforms the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.

Two-step test: (1) Abstract idea? (2) Inventive concept?
Generic computer hardware cannot save abstract mathematical or economic claims.
35 U.S.C. § 101
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

A single color can be registered as a trademark under the Lanham Act if it has acquired secondary meaning identifying product source and does not serve a functional purpose.

Single colors are registrable upon proof of secondary meaning.
Functionality doctrine strictly bars utilitarian or competitively essential colors.
15 U.S.C. § 1127
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California Superior Court (San Mateo County)GOOD LAW

Scola v. Facebook, Inc.

No. 18-CIV-05135 (Cal. Super. Ct. 2020)

The $52 million settlement established an industry benchmark for content moderation occupational safety, requiring platforms to fund psychiatric diagnosis/treatment and mandate software mitigations (grayscale display, audio muting, 4-hour daily exposure limits).

$52M settlement establishes platform accountability for digital sanitation trauma.
Requires algorithmic UI tools (blurring, grayscale) and clinical support for data workers.
29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1) (OSHA General Duty)
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United States District Court for the Northern District of CaliforniaGOOD LAW

Mobley v. Workday, Inc.

No. 23-cv-00770 (N.D. Cal. 2024)

Workday can be held directly liable as an 'employment agency' and 'agent' under federal anti-discrimination laws because its AI software exercises delegated decision-making authority over job applicants.

AI screening vendors are legally 'employment agencies' under Title VII.
Algorithmic filtering software is directly liable for disparate impact discrimination.
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (Title VII)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated. However, complementary DNA (cDNA) is patent eligible because it is synthetic and does not occur naturally in the human genome.

Isolated natural DNA sequences cannot be patented.
Synthetically engineered cDNA remains fully patent eligible.
35 U.S.C. § 101
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United States Court of Appeals for the Federal CircuitGOOD LAW

Substantial evidence supported the PTAB's determination of no interference-in-fact. Eukaryotic application of CRISPR-Cas9 was a non-obvious inventive leap requiring separate patent claims from generic prokaryotic gene editing.

Eukaryotic gene editing is patentably distinct from prokaryotic discovery.
Unpredictability in human biological translation defeats obviousness rejections.
35 U.S.C. § 103
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United States District Court for the Middle District of North CarolinaGOOD LAW

United States v. RealPage, Inc.

No. 1:24-cv-00710 (M.D.N.C. 2024)

The DOJ complaint establishes the modern enforcement theory of algorithmic horizontal price fixing: sharing data through a centralized algorithmic hub substitutes collective algorithmic pricing for independent market competition.

Sharing private data with a pricing algorithm creates Sherman Act § 1 liability.
Algorithms cannot be used to coordinate price increases between competitors.
15 U.S.C. § 1
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Federal Communications Commission Enforcement BureauGOOD LAW

The FCC issued its first-ever space debris enforcement penalty, finding DISH failed to properly deorbit EchoStar-7, imposing a $150,000 civil penalty, and establishing precedent for orbital debris regulatory enforcement.

FCC enforces binding civil penalties for orbital debris disposal failures.
Satellite operators must reserve sufficient propellant for graveyard deorbit maneuvers.
47 U.S.C. § 308 (Communications Act)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

Commercial advertisements are fully eligible for copyright protection. Justice Holmes established the foundational 'Aesthetic Non-Discrimination Principle': judges trained only in law must not constitute themselves final arbiters of the artistic merit or worth of pictorial illustrations.

Judges must never assess aesthetic quality or artistic worth.
Commercial advertising art is fully protected under Title 17.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

Photographs are copyrightable works of authorship when the human creator exercises mental conception, poses the subject, arranges lighting, and selects the visual composition.

Mechanical and algorithmic devices can be instruments of human authorship.
Originality stems from mental conception, framing, lighting, and composition.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

The sale of copying equipment does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes or is capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Private non-commercial home time-shifting of free television broadcasts is fair use.

Dual-use technologies capable of substantial non-infringing uses cannot trigger contributory infringement.
Non-commercial private time-shifting is fair use.
17 U.S.C. § 106
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

The Supreme Court unanimously held that alphabetical white pages directories lack the requisite creative originality for copyright. Originality is a constitutional requirement requiring independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. The Court explicitly repudiated the 'sweat of the brow' doctrine.

Originality requires independent creation plus a modicum of creativity.
'Sweat of the brow' hard work confers zero copyright protection.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8
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United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitGOOD LAW

Midler v. Ford Motor Co.

849 F.2d 460 (9th Cir. 1988)

When a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs and have committed a tort under California common law.

Distinctive human voice is an actionable attribute of identity and persona.
Deliberate sound-alike voice simulation in commerce constitutes tortious appropriation.
Cal. Civ. Code § 3344
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

Griggs v. Duke Power Co.

401 U.S. 424 (1971)

Title VII prohibits not only intentional discrimination, but also employment practices that are facially neutral in their treatment of different groups but that in fact fall more harshly on one group than another and cannot be justified by business necessity. Chief Justice Burger established the landmark 'Disparate Impact Doctrine'.

Title VII bans facially neutral selection tests that produce adverse demographic impact without business necessity.
Discriminatory intent is not required; discriminatory effect controls.
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(k) (Title VII Disparate Impact Provision)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

Diamond v. Chakrabarty

447 U.S. 303 (1980)

A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Congress intended patentable subject matter to 'include anything under the sun that is made by man.'

Living organisms modified by human engineering are patentable subject matter under § 101.
Congress intended patent protection for 'anything under the sun that is made by man.'
35 U.S.C. § 101 (Inventions Patentable)
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Supreme Court of the United StatesGOOD LAW

The Frye 'general acceptance' test was superseded by the Federal Rules of Evidence. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, the trial judge must ensure that all scientific and technological testimony is not only relevant, but reliable, acting as a judicial 'gatekeeper'.

Trial judges act as affirmative evidentiary gatekeepers for technological and scientific proof.
Admissibility requires empirical testability, known error rates, and peer-reviewed methodology.
Fed. R. Evid. 702 (Testimony by Expert Witnesses)
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Supreme Court of WisconsinCAUTION

State v. Loomis

881 N.W.2d 749 (Wis. 2016)

The use of an algorithmic risk assessment at sentencing does not violate due process, provided that the risk score is not used to determine whether to incarcerate or the severity of the sentence, and is accompanied by mandatory judicial warnings regarding the tool's proprietary nature, racial disparities, and group-level statistical limitations.

Algorithmic black-box risk scores cannot be the determinative factor in state deprivation of liberty.
Mandatory algorithmic warning disclosures are required regarding trade secret opacity and demographic disparities.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV (Due Process Clause)
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U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New YorkGOOD LAW

Hermès International v. Rothschild

663 F. Supp. 3d 318 (S.D.N.Y. 2023)

The Rogers v. Grimaldi artistic relevance test applies to NFT digital art, but does not protect digital creators who use another's famous trademark to intentionally mislead consumers as to source or affiliation in digital marketplaces. The jury found Rothschild liable on all counts, awarding Hermès $133,000 in damages.

Federal trademark protection applies equally to virtual goods, NFTs, and spatial computing assets.
The Rogers First Amendment test does not immunize intentional commercial trade dress imitation in digital marketplaces.
15 U.S.C. § 1114 (Trademark Infringement)
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