Question

Ximena, who runs a successful real estate agency, ran across a very interesting pamphlet on customer relations. The pamphlet was fifty pages long and cost $70.00. Ximena thought the price was outrageous. Accordingly, she bought one copy and photocopied the pages that she thought were pertinent and gave them to her employees. She copied forty of the pages out of the pamphlet for each of twenty employees. A disgruntled employee informed the pamphlet's publisher what Ximena had done, and she was charged with copyright infringement. Ximena defended on the basis of the fair use doctrine. Discuss the four factors a court would consider in determining whether a violation occurred and whether you think Ximena would prevail.

Answer 1

1. Copy write infringement takes place when a copy writed work is used without the permission of the copy write holder like copying books, reproducing the content, distributing, publically displaying etc.

2. Fair use doctrine is a law which allows limited usage of copy writed material without having to from the copy write holder.

3. The four factors which judges would consider if the usage is fair or not are stated below.

a. The purpose and the character of use: That transformative factor being an important indicator of fair use determines the degree of transformation whether the material has been used to create something new or exactly copied verbatim.

b. The nature of the copy writed work: the fair use case becomes stronger if the copy of the material is from a published work rather than a unpublished work.

c. The amount of substantiality of the portion taken: It is considered to be fair use when less content is copied than more content but this less content should not be a portion taken from the art of the work.

d. The effect of use upon the potential market: If the usage deprives the income of the copy write owner or affects the potential market then it is not fair.

4. In the above case it is clear that this copy right infringement deprives the income where in for one copy it charges $70 but Ximena takes lot of copies and distributes to lot of members which affects the income of the copy right hold.