Last night at American University Washington College of Law, Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit discussed the role of the fair use doctrine within the structure of copyright law. Judge Leval is responsible for introducing the concept of transformative use to United States fair use jurisprudence and his lecture provided an overview of the development of the doctrine to date. He is the author of the court’s opinion in Authors Guild Inc., et al. v. Google, Inc. (October 16, 2015) in which the court held that Google’s digitization of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. Judge Leval also authored Toward a Fair Use Standard, 103 HARV. L. REV. 1105 (1990).
A video of his lecture is available at http://pijip.org/judgeleval
PIJIP’s Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property Law is named in recognition of the continuing contributions of Professor Peter Jaszi to the study of intellectual property at WCL and in the world at large, and in particular for his lasting contributions to the elevation of the public interest in intellectual property discourse.
