Several legal scholars have already commented on the specifics of the ruling, so I won’t repeat their observations here, but this decision has several important implications for the future of technological innovation and the future of digital media:

1. Judges continue to recognize the importance of search for digital media.

As we continue to create and collect more and more digital media, the importance of search increases. It’s no longer feasible to simple store our digital photos, songs, books, or papers in a folder and find them later. Whether the collection is individual, family, educational, or commercial, the highly transformative power of digitizing, indexing, and searching through digital records (including copyrighted works) has become of paramount importance to society. Judge Chin’s ruling is the latest in a long line of cases recognizing this and has solidified the legality of this practice.

2. Copyright owners can’t just cry wolf when someone digitizes their works.

In the past, courts were often sympathetic to copyright owners who sued over digitizing of their works without permission, even if there were other benefits to doing so. For example, in UMG Recordings v. MP3.com, Inc., the court ruled that an online service infringed music copyrights by pre-loading CDs onto its servers to provide streaming access to users who owned the same CDs at home. Despite the societal benefits of the new service (including huge efficiencies for consumers and even a potential increase in music sales for copyright owners), the court assumed that any unauthorized copying was detrimental to the copyright system and therefore had to be illegal.

Judge Chin’s ruling, on the other hand, takes an almost entirely different tack. Rather than eschew technological advances that promote convenience, efficiency, and greater access to copyrighted works, Chin embraces them in his opinion. He appropriately recognizes that fair use, as much as the exclusive rights of a copyright owner, plays a critical role in our copyright system: “to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’” By holding that Google Books advanced the progress of the arts and sciences without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders, Chin is sending a signal to the copyright owner community that simply claiming copying of your works won’t be enough, especially when those copies are serving important public needs.

The launch of the Media Breaker, a free online video editor for remixing third-party content, opens doors for creative uses of video remix and media to engage students and modernize education. It also calls attention to the lack of awareness among educators and students about their rights under the fair use, which allows the reuse and modification of copyrighted materials. But how far do fair use protections go? What do media-savvy students and teachers need to know? What is the role of fair use in a 21st-century classroom?

These questions and more will be explored at "Taking on the Take-Down Notice: Copyright, Youth and Educators in Harmony", an event co-sponsored by The Lamp and the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, in partnership with Mozilla's Hive Learning Network NYC. Featuring a panel of New York students in high school, college and graduate school, plus a panel of leading experts in the fields of intellectual property law, education and digital rights, this event will tackle some of the largest questions around how media can--and must--be part of the future of education. The event will begin with a brief panel of students, moderated by NYU Law professor Christopher Sprigman, followed by a demonstration of the Media Breaker. The expert panel will follow, moderated by The LAMP's co-founder and Education Director, Dr. Katherine Fry. Panelists include:  -- Christopher Bavitz, Managing Director, Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic based at the Berkman Center -- Jeanne Fromer, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law focusing on copyright, intellectual property and patent law -- Elisa Kreisinger, Brooklyn-based video artist. Her latest work includes remixing Mad Men into feminists and The Real Housewives into lesbians. Elisa’s 2012 US Copyright Office testimony helped win crucial exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, decriminalizing DVD ripping for artistic statements -- Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information -- Gigi Sohn, President and co-founder of digital rights advocacy group Public Knowledge

A reception will follow. 

As that deadline looms, DARC provides the first opportunity for broadening the conversation beyond the usual drone debates. At DARC, speakers and attendees will learn side by side about the contours of the unmanned systems landscape, and work together to develop a constructive law and policy agenda.

The conference schedule features an exciting lineup of speakers from a wide spectrum of backgrounds exploring the drone phenomenon from myriad perspectives. Notable speakers include:

Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania; White House OSTP Assistant Director, Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems)

Missy Cummings (former Navy fighter pilot and director of the Humans and Automation Lab MIT/Duke)

Daniel Suarez (Science fiction author, Kill Decision)

Colin Quinn (CEO of DJI North America)

Michael Toscano (President and CEO of AUVSI)

Chris Anderson (founder and CEO of 3D Robotics)

Henri Seydoux (founder and CEO of Parrot S.A.)

Robbie Hood (Director of NOAA's UAS program)

Edgar Waggoner (Director of NASA's Integrated Systems Research Program)

Catherine Crump (ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project)

Stephen Gorevan (Founder and Chairman of Honeybee Robotics)

Heather Knight (Robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute)

Stuart Banner (UCLA School of Law; author of Who Owns the Sky?)

DARC features over 20 workshops, working groups, and roundtables covering a broad range of topics, and emphasizing our focus on promoting an interdisciplinary approach to influencing the development of drone law and policy: aerospace engineers will help inform legal conversations; legal experts and policy advocates will experience drone technology first-hand; government officials will be exposed to the larger cultural conversations occurring around the technology they are tasked with regulating.

Conference attendees will see flying robots in action at AfterDARC, our drone demo show where the inventors and technologists of DARC will show off their creations live and on stage. AfterDARC features talking robots, quadcopters that can see, a kite that can fly anywhere, flying robots that fit in the palm of your hand, a wearable command-and-control module that let's you see through a drone's eyes, and much more.

To close out this first-of-a-kind conference, on October 13, DARC migrates to ITP, NYU's "Center for the Recently Possible" at the Tisch School of the Arts, for a fully interactive day of hacking and building open to everyone, regardless of skill level. The DARC hackday will be led by acclaimed drone hackathon conveners Nodecopter and will feature a fleet of AR.Drone 2.0's, generously donated by hackday sponsor Parrot.

More About The Event:

From the opinion:

As a recent law review article explains, however,

"The Scripps, Litton, and Fiskars Federal Circuit decisions do not necessarily preclude burying from being a form of inequitable conduct as they did not address the burying issue directly. In Scripps, the reference had not been disclosed and instead was discovered by the patent examiner “on his own.” In Litton, the patent applicant originally withheld the reference but later disclosed it during reissue. In Fiskars, the applicant disclosed a brochure describing what he considered to be the closest prior art to his invention, but the examiner indicated that the brochure had not been considered. The Federal Circuit consequently found no inequitable conduct because the brochure was before the examiner. None of these decisions speak directly to burying, and none necessarily preclude the practice from being a form of inequitable conduct."

*12 Robert Brendan Taylor, Burying, 19 Mich. Telecomm. & Tech. L.Rev. 99, 107–08 (2012) (footnotes omitted). Accordingly, the Federal Circuit has not established definitively whether or under what circumstances burying may constitute inequitable conduct.

Approximately 5-10 papers will be selected for presentation and feedback. Depending on interest, we may also have a session devoted to a group discussion (such as of recent developments in the field or empirical methodologies and questions) or a session dedicated to “mini-presentations” of early stage projects.

Individuals who wish to present should electronically submit either (1) an abstract and title or (2) a paper draft (preferable for evaluation), no later than Friday, November 15, 2013, to Leslie Jenkins at [email protected]. Decisions on requests to present will be made no later than Friday, November 29, 2013. Presented papers should be relatively developed drafts in progress that can benefit from substantial commentary and revision before the spring 2014 submission cycle. Presented papers will be due on Thursday, January 2, 2014, and will be posted on the password-protected workshop website on that date. The workshop is open to all who wish to attend, whether or not they are presenting a paper. We very much hope that this annual workshop will make it possible for IP law scholars located in the tri-state region to get together on a more regular basis to share and discuss each other’s work. Because of the importance of group discussion, we ask that attendees and presenters plan to attend the workshop for its duration.

All conference presenters and attendees will be expected to pay for their individual transportation costs. Meals will be provided by NYU School of Law.

For questions, please feel free to contact the Tri-State Workshop co-chairs, Barton Beebe ([email protected]) and Jeanne Fromer ([email protected]). Please feel free to pass this along to interested parties at your institution.