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Advanced Copyright Issues on the Internet - Fenwick & West LLP

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oker’s listing. Under this service, Yachtbroker.com copied and pasted certain c<strong>on</strong>tent,including pictures and descripti<strong>on</strong>s (but not <strong>the</strong> HTML for <strong>the</strong> entire web page), from yachtlistings <strong>on</strong> Yachtworld.com and posted <strong>the</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tent <strong>on</strong> Yachtbroker.com in a different format.Although <strong>the</strong> copied c<strong>on</strong>tent posted <strong>on</strong> Yachtbroker.com c<strong>on</strong>tained many of <strong>the</strong> same descriptiveheadings as <strong>the</strong> original listings <strong>on</strong> Yachtworld.com, <strong>the</strong> court found that <strong>the</strong> headings were <strong>the</strong>industry standard for yacht listings <strong>on</strong> yacht brokering web sites. 2348NSM filed an acti<strong>on</strong> for a declaratory judgment that its two services did not infringeBoats.com’s copyrights, which <strong>the</strong> court granted. The court ruled that Boats.com’s copyright ofYachtworld.com’s public web pages in order to extract from yacht listings facts unprotected bycopyright law c<strong>on</strong>stituted a fair use. 2349 The court fur<strong>the</strong>r ruled that <strong>the</strong> copyrights in <strong>the</strong> picturesand descripti<strong>on</strong>s of yachts copied by <strong>the</strong> valet service were owned by <strong>the</strong> individual yachtbrokers, not Boats.com, and such copying was <strong>the</strong>refore not infringing. Nor was copying of <strong>the</strong>headings an infringement, because <strong>the</strong> headings, being industry standards, were not protected bycopyright. 2350 Boats.com also claimed a copyright in <strong>the</strong> look and feel of <strong>the</strong> Yachtworld.comweb site that it alleged had been copied by Yachtbroker.com. The court rejected this claim,finding that <strong>the</strong> two web sites were quite dissimilar in appearance. 2351 Finally, <strong>the</strong> court rejecteda claim of infringement in a compilati<strong>on</strong> copyright over <strong>the</strong> yacht listings <strong>on</strong> Yachtworld.com.The court held that, because <strong>the</strong> format used by NSM to display <strong>on</strong> Yachtbroker.com <strong>the</strong> c<strong>on</strong>tentcopied from Yachtworld.com differed from <strong>the</strong> format used by Yachtworld.com to display <strong>the</strong>same informati<strong>on</strong>, <strong>the</strong> compilati<strong>on</strong> of yacht listings <strong>on</strong> Yachtbroker.com was not virtuallyidentical and was <strong>the</strong>refore not infringing. 2352IV. CONCLUSION<str<strong>on</strong>g>Copyright</str<strong>on</strong>g> law provides <strong>on</strong>e of <strong>the</strong> most important forms of intellectual propertyprotecti<strong>on</strong> <strong>on</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Internet</strong>. C<strong>on</strong>siderable challenges are presented, however, in adaptingtraditi<strong>on</strong>al copyright law, which was designed to deal with <strong>the</strong> creati<strong>on</strong>, distributi<strong>on</strong> and sale ofprotected works in tangible copies, to <strong>the</strong> electr<strong>on</strong>ic transmissi<strong>on</strong>s of <strong>the</strong> <strong>on</strong>line world in whichcopies are not tangible in <strong>the</strong> traditi<strong>on</strong>al sense, and it is often difficult to know precisely where acopy resides at any given time within <strong>the</strong> network.The most difficult aspect of adapting copyright law to <strong>the</strong> <strong>on</strong>line world stems from <strong>the</strong>fact that virtually every activity <strong>on</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Internet</strong> – such as browsing, caching, linking,downloading, accessing informati<strong>on</strong>, and operati<strong>on</strong> of an <strong>on</strong>line service – involves <strong>the</strong> making ofcopies, at least to <strong>the</strong> extent <strong>the</strong> law treats electr<strong>on</strong>ic images of data stored in RAM as “copies”for purposes of copyright law. In short, “copying” is both ubiquitous and inherent in <strong>the</strong> verynature of <strong>the</strong> medium. If <strong>the</strong> law were to treat all forms of “copying” as infringements of <strong>the</strong>2348 Id. at 3-4.2349 Id. at 4.2350 Id. at 5.2351 Id. at 6.2352 Id. at 7.- 512 -

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