Re: [ARSCLIST] Brunswick Records rights/Universal

[Karl Miller <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Mike Richter wrote:

> I'm afraid you have been seriously misinformed. The lower court's
> decision has been available and I commend it to you; it is surprisingly
> readable for such a document. I am not an attorney of any sort but I was
> interested enough to find the decision and to come to the following
> conclusions relative to your post - reported here from memory.
>
> 4. Naxos's improvement was part of the argument against Capitol's claim
> of damages. In essence, the judge found that since Capitol had the
> primary material, they could exploit Naxos's work if the market
> justified the investment and thereby come up with a superior product.

>From http://www.codmanllp.com/CapitolRecords_v_Naxos.pdf

"The District Court granted summary judgment to Naxos.
The court characterized Capitol's cause of action as a "hybrid
copyright, unfair competition" claim and concluded that Capitol
did not have intellectual property rights in the original
recordings because its copyrights had expired in the United
Kingdom. With respect to the unfair competition cause of action,
the District Court opined that the Naxos recordings were not a
"duplicate" or "imitation" of the original recordings but "an
entirely new and commercially viable product" because the
original shellac records were obsolete and Naxos had removed
"numerous sound imperfections" from the records."

> 5. Neither the judgement of "obsolete" nor any other value measure was
> offered that I can recall. The decision was based on objective, legal
> points only.

See supra

As I say, we can all read things differently and perhaps the citations I
have reviewed have not been accurate, but I too read the entire decision
and keep it on file.

For me, this reminds me that I am not an attorney and I would also venture
to guess that many who report these things are not either.

I will go back and read my copy of the original decision. Perhaps the
notion of abandoment of copyright is just a result of my mind playing
tricks on me.

Karl