Pre-emption

Laws v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. (9th Cir 5/24/06)

Long ago (1976) in a pre-digital, pre-internet world, Debra Laws, a recording artist, signed a license with Electra Records for Electra to exclusively produce master recordings and to sub-license the resulting recordings.

Fast forward to the digital, internet burgeoning world where Electra licenses to Sony the nonexclusive right ’sample’ from Law’s recordings to integrate those ‘brief samples’ into a Jennifer Lopez DC and music video entitled, “All I Have”. Electra does not communicate or enquire of Law’s inclination to such a sublicense as Electra was the exclusive licensee, and as such was the titular and beneficial owner.

Law, outraged, sued in California state court under much the same analysis that Portia stopped Shylock from extracting his ‘pound of flesh’ pointing out that Shylock could only have a “pound of flesh” without a drop of blood. Law claimed that she had standing in state court under California Publicity Code 3344 which prohibits the misappropriation of one’s voice, image or name.

Electra defended stating that the California Publicity Statute was preempted by the Federal Copyright Law. The Ninth Circuit agree that the California Statute was preempted.

Which just goes to show that Shakespeare is out of step with digital, internet copyright law: You can take the pound of flesh and all the blood you want, if you have an exclusive copyright license. Shylock was way ahead of his time.

This entry was posted by Kate Spelman on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 11:40 am and is filed under Copyrights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.