Exam No._________

Instructions: As previously announced this is an open-book exam. You may refer to the course materials, your notes, my daily outlines, and the mastery exercises in answering these questions, but no commercial outlines or summaries. You are particularly encouraged to refer to relevant provisions of the Copyright Act. If you find any troubling ambiguities in the facts or questions posed, identify them, make what seem to you to be the most reasonable assumptions about their resolution, indicate those assumptions, and proceed with your answer.

Number of Questions: There are, in all, ten questions, but you need only answer six (6) out of the first nine (9). (If you answer more than six of the first nine, I'll count the six strongest in calculating your final grade.) The six you answer from the first group of nine will count for 2/3 in my evaluation of your performance on the exam; the last one, Question 10, will count for 1/3. Consequently, I recommend devoting roughly two hours to the first six you choose to answer or roughly twenty minutes, each, and one hour to question number 10.

Recommended time (two hours)

From the LII mailbag. The following copyright questions were sent to Cornell's Legal Information Institute over the past year -- real questions, asked by real people. As to each provide a short response, no more than two or three paragraphs, with specific references to the statute. Where the appropriate answer is "it depends," provide as clear guidance as you can as to what facts or factors it depends upon. You need to answer only six questions out of this group of nine.

Question 1. If I take the melody of a song and make my own arrangement from that melody, do I still have to pay a royalty to the person who wrote the melody? Also, if the answer to this is yes, how do I find song melodies that have expired copyrights, and are the old classics like Schubert, Bach & Strauss themes free for anyone to use?

Question 2. I plan on opening a health care office within the next 12 months and am interested in playing pre-recorded music in the waiting/treatment rooms. Is special permission required to play recorded music in such an office setting?

Question 3. My name is Angie. I have written over 100 poems & i need a copywrite..but I don't exactly know where to go or how much it will cost me or anything like that.. could you please help me out?? I live in PA.

Question 4. I am curious as to whether I can obtain a copyright for several patterns of my original crochet* designs (* needlework, commonly ornamental). If I can, how should I proceed?

Question 5. I've produced a musical recording titled "Bound for the Kingdom" which contains an original song titled "I'm Bound for the Kingdom." I am aware of at least two other copyrighted songs with the latter title. The copyright owner of one of them has just sent a letter demanding that I change the name of the recording. However, the recording title doesn't even match the title of their copyrighted song. Can they deny permission because it is similar?

Question 6. I recently finished writing a payroll system using Microsoft Access97. This is a very detailed and complex system that I've created. My question is can I copyright this system even though I used a copyrighted program to write it.

Question 7. Hi, I have a question and a scenario to help explain the question. My friend let me borrow several of her compact discs so I could copy my favorite songs from them onto tape. My roommate told me that was stealing. Could you please let me know if this is really illegal and, if it is, what penalties I might face?

Question 8. I have a book of doll patterns, which has the following on its first page: "No instructions, photographs, or patterns contained in this publication may be reproduced (except for personal use) or duplicated mechanically without written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief excerpts. It is permissible, however, for an individual to make dolls from these designs and sell them at bazaars or craft shows." There are three different dolls in that book that I like to make, and I have, indeed, sold numbers of them informally. A local toy store has now asked me to make a quantity of all three for them to sell during the holiday season. Do I really need to get permission?

Question 9. Hi. I often write freelance articles for foreign business magazines and have a question regarding reproduction of U.S. government documents abroad. Here in the U.S., such documents are in the public domain and can be reproduced by anyone without permission.

The reason I ask is that recently, U.S. Commerce and State Department reports have started to contain a notice saying "International Copyright; U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service and U.S. Dept. of State; All rights reserved outside of the U.S." These reports are available on the Internet. Does that mean someone in the U.K. isn't allowed to download the reports and reproduce them without getting permission from the U.S. government?

Recommended time (one hour)

Your client, Sam Clement, is a public school teacher who, for the past 7 years, has been developing an American History unit that deals with the impact of technology on the U.S. economy, employment patterns, family life, and urbanization. It has steadily grown in scope, sophistication, and length and now totals over 500 pages of text -- encompassing historic documents, background notes, biographical summaries, numerous study questions, and references to commonly available research sources. Since 1997, one of Sam's colleagues at Eastern High, Thelma Donald has also contributed to the project -- teaching her students from the materials Clement has prepared, making suggestions for additions and changes, and adding numerous charts and timelines that provide a powerful graphic organizing component. Thelma's graphics and computer skills prompted the idea that they would move this content to the Web. With the assistance of Ms. Donald's teenage daughter, who is an Internet whiz, they created an impressive multimedia Web site, on a server that is owned and operated by a county-wide school district consortium. Its core remains the original Clement materials, but this new electronic version is significantly enriched by the content improvements suggested by Thelma, the graphic elements she has added, and hundreds of hypertext links to pertinent sources on the Net, which have been tracked down by both Sam and Thelma, and integrated by Thelma's daughter, Ursula. The vast majority of these links, including all of those to audio-visual materials (early industrial movies vintage 1904, still photos and maps, and early Edison recordings) lead into the "American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress." That site says three things about copyright: 1) the U.S. government claims no copyright to materials it contains, 2) materials are not placed there if the Library's staff believe them to be subject to copyright, but 3) users must come to their own judgments about the copyright status of materials held there.

The quality and distinctive focus of Sam and Thelma's "Engine of Change" site quickly drew attention. During the first three months of the 1999-2000 school year numerous other schools and teacher resource sites on the Net linked to their site. Some asked permission to link. Whichever of the two received such a request granted permission without hesitation. (The site lists the names and e-mail addresses of both, in parallel.)

Last week, however, a message addressed to them both brought a proposal they viewed quite differently. It came from a new commercial venture, TechnoEducate.com. The original message, confirmed in a subsequent phone conversation, told Sam and Thelma that TechnoEducate was prepared to pay a substantial sum to license all the content held at the Engine of Change site. The company's proposal contemplates a transfer of that content to the TechnoEducate.com site, along with full rights to add or modify. Thelma (and Ursula) were delighted at the prospect; Sam was appalled. The superintendent of Eastern High, learning of the news, shocked them both with his assertion that the school held all rights to the site and that, as a consequence, he would take over discussions with TechnoEducate.

Sam has turned to you for advice. He is excited about the use his material is now getting, is deeply appreciative of the contributions made by Thelma and Ursula, but remains steadfastly opposed to turning his creation over to a commercial site. As he sees it, TechnoEducate will use his education materials as bait for a variety of educational products they will then advertise or sell. He is also deeply offended by the notion that the school district has any claim to his work.

Mr. Clement wants three things from you:

a) a review of his rights vis-a-vis the school district;

b) an explanation of how the disagreement between himself and Thelma (and Ursula) would be resolved under the Copyright Act, assuming they can't resolve it among themselves;

c) an indication of what recourse he would have under the Act if TechnoEducate were to proceed to use "his" materials based on consent from Thelma or the school district.