![RequiemForANun.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/51/RequiemForANun.jpg/180px-RequiemForANun.jpg)
The latest arguably excessively aggressive copyright litigation in the USA involves
the attributed quote – or actually the slight misquote – of a couple of brief
sentences from the late William Faulkner's Requiem For A Nun in a movie by Woody Allen.
Mr. Faulkner wrote:
"The
past is never dead. It's not even past."
Mr. Allen’s
movie, Midnight In Paris, supposedly has the following as part of the
dialogue:
"The
past is not dead" Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that?
Faulkner.”
It should go without saying that any Canadian or
UK court would toss this as “insubstantial copying”, without the need to even
look at fair dealing. It’s two short sentences, and nine words. Almost nobody
would consider the quotation involved here to be “substantial” or more than “de
minimis”, although it was
astonishingly suggested in the K-12 case in the Supreme Court of Canada that
copying more than one sentence is “substantial”. Fortunately, the Supreme Court
of Canada completely ignored this submission.
However, that said, there is some arguably rogue
and wrong but often cited appellate law in the USA (Bridgeport
v. Dimension Films, 6th Circuit, 2005) that even copying of just a
millisecond of a song may be infringing. Well – one has to admit that this is,
at least, a “bright line”, as that Court stated.
The Faulkner case is not in the 6th
Circuit. What is important to know about this lawsuit is that it was filed in
the Federal District Court in Oxford, Mississippi – the home of town of William
Faulkner. A jury trial has been demanded. Anyone wanting to read up on jury
trials in Mississippi may wish to consult John Grisham’s non-authoritative but
very provocative and best-selling fictional effort entitled “The Runaway
Jury”.
BTW, William Faulkner died on July 6, 1962.
His works will go into the public domain in Canada at the end of this year.
HPK
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