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Archive-name: law/Copyright-FAQ/part6 See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT COPYRIGHT (V. 1.1.2) Part 6 - Appendix: A note about legal citation form, or, "What's all this '17 U.S.C. 107' and '977 F.2d 1510' stuff?" Copyright 1994 Terry Carroll (c) 1994 Terry Carroll Last update: January 6, 1994. This article is the last in a series of six articles that contains frequently asked questions (FAQ) with answers relating to copyright law, particularly that of the United States. It is posted to the Usenet misc.legal, misc.legal.computing, misc.int-property, comp.patents, misc.answers, comp.answers, and news.answers newsgroups monthly, on or near the 17th of each month. This FAQ is available for anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209], in directory /pub/usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ, files part1 - part6. If you do not have direct access by FTP, you can obtain a copy via email: send a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the following lines in it: send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part1 send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part2 send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part3 send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part4 send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part5 send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part6 quit DISCLAIMER - PLEASE READ. This article is Copyright 1994 by Terry Carroll. It may be freely redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice is not removed. It may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents without the written permission of the copyright holder. Permission is expressly granted for this document to be made available for file transfer from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the Internet. Permission is further granted for this document to be made available for file transfer in the data libraries of associated with the following Compuserve Information Services fora: the Legal Forum, the Desktop Publishing Forum, the Show Business Forum, and the Ideas, Invention & Innovation Forum. This article is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. Nothing in this article represents the views of Santa Clara University or of the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal. While all information in this article is believed to be correct at the time of writing, this article is for educational purposes only and does not purport to provide legal advice. If you require legal advice, you should consult with a legal practitioner licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Terry Carroll, the FAQ-maintainer, is a computer professional, and is currently (January 1994) a student in his final semester at Santa Clara University School of Law, is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, and is seeking employment as an attorney. If you have any additions, corrections, or suggestions for improvement to this FAQ, please send them to one of the following addresses, in order of preference: 71550.133@compuserve.com tcarroll@scuacc.scu.edu I will accept suggestions for questions to be added to the FAQ, but please be aware that I will be more receptive to questions that are accompanied by answers. :-) FAQ ORGANIZATION. The following table indicates the contents of each of the parts of the FAQ. Part 1 - Introduction (including full table of contents). Part 2 - Copyright basics. Part 3 - Common miscellaneous questions. Part 4 - International aspects. Part 5 - Further copyright resources. Part 6 - Appendix: A note about legal citation form, or, "What's all this '17 U.S.C. 107' and '977 F.2d 1510' stuff?" APPENDIX: A note about legal citation form, or, "What's all this '17 U.S.C. 107' and.'977 F.2d 1510' stuff?" Citations to legal materials can be intimidating when first encountered. The purpose of this entry is to provide a short description of the legal citations used in this article to reduce that intimidation. It's not intended as a be-all and end-all to legal research, but just a way of letting you find the sources that are cited in this FAQ if you head to a law library. If you don't care about looking up any of the legal materials cited in this FAQ, you can skip this entry. On the other hand, if you find this interesting and would like more information, I recommend Mark Eckenwiler's Legal Research FAQ. This FAQ is archived at rtfm.mit.edu, directory /pub/usenet/news/answers/law/research, files part1 and part2. If you do not have direct access by FTP, you can obtain a copy via email: send a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the following lines in it: send usenet/news.answers/law/research/part1 send usenet/news.answers/law/research/part2 quit Questions regarding the Legal Research FAQ should be directed to Mark at eck@panix.com. CASES: Cases are reported in books called "reporters." A reporter generally consists of a series of bound volumes. Often when the volume number becomes too high, the reporter publisher starts over with volume 1, designating the new set as a "second series," "third series," etc., as appropriate. Because copyright is almost entirely a matter of federal law, most (if not all) cases referenced in this FAQ are federal cases. The most common reporters (with their abbreviations shown in parentheses) are: United States Reports (U.S.) - This is the official reporter for cases from the United States Supreme Court. This is the standard reporter reference provided when referencing a Supreme Court case. If a case is especially recent, it may not yet be published in the U.S. Reports, in which case, the proper reference is to one of the unofficial reporters (either the Supreme Court Reporter or the Lawyers' Edition). The unofficial reporters are also cross-indexed by the U.S. Report's volume and page numbers, so that given a citation to a case in the U.S. Reports, you should be able to also find it in either of the unofficial reporters. The converse is not true: if, for example, you have a citation to the Supreme Court Reporter, you will not be able to find the case in the U.S. Reports. All law libraries carry a set of books called Shepard's Citations, which will permit you to cross-reference this way. See your law librarian for help using these intimidating-looking books. Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct.) - This is an unofficial reporter published by West Publishing. It too reports cases from the United States Supreme Court. The advantages of this reporter is that it comes out more quickly than the official reporter, and also includes West's headnotes and case summaries. United States Supreme Court Reporter, Lawyers' Edition (L.Ed.) - This is another unofficial reporter, similar to the Supreme Court Reporter, but published by the Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co. In addition to the advantages offered by the Supreme Court Reporter, it often includes short essays (called annotations) on points of law dealt with in a case. Federal Reporter (F.) - This is an unofficial reporter, published by West, that reports cases from the various United States Courts of Appeal. There is no official reporter for these cases, and the Federal Reporter de facto fills that role. Federal Supplement (F.Supp) - This is an unofficial reporter, published by West, that reports cases from the various United States District Courts (that is, from the courts of "original jurisdiction," where trials are originally held and often appealed to the higher courts). There is no official reporter for these cases, and the Federal Supplement de facto fills that role. United States Patent Quarterly (U.S.P.Q.) - This is a topical reporting service from the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA). It reports cases from various courts, but because it's a "topical reporter," it only reports cases dealing with a certain topic, in this case, intellectual property (despite its name, it's not limited to patent cases). This is only a very small subset of the reporters and services that report cases. For a more complete list, see "The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 15th Edition," in particular, tables T.1 (United States Jurisdictions), T.2 (Foreign Jurisdictions) and T.16 (Services). The standard way of referencing a case is in the format: case-name volume-number reporter [series, if applicable] page-number (jurisdiction, date) "Jurisdiction" is omitted for U.S. Supreme Court cases; the fact that the reporter is U.S., S.Ct., or L.Ed. is enough to show that it's a U.S. Supreme Court case. If two page numbers are included, the first page number is the page on which the case begins, and the second is the page that contains the particular point being referenced (called a "pinpoint cite" or "jump cite"). Here is an example of a case citation: Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510, 1520 (9th Cir., 1993). >From this citation, we know that the parties in the case are Sega and Accolade; the case is reported in volume 977 (second series) of the Federal Reporter; the case begins on page 1510, but the particular point being referenced is on page 1520; the case was decided in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1993. STATUTES: A federal statute is generally enacted as a "public law," and is assigned a P.L. number. This number indicates the Congress in which it was enacted, and the law number within the Congress. For example, the Copyright Act of 1976 was the 553rd law enacted by the 94th Congress, and so is officially catalogued as P.L. 94-553. If you know the P.L. number of a law, you can generally find it in the United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.), or in Statutes at Large (see below) easily. Once enacted, Public Laws are catalogued in a official statute list called "Statutes At Large." Citations to Statutes at Large ("Stat.") are similar to that for cases: volume, service identifier, and page number. For example, the Copyright Act of 1976 may be cited as 90 Stat 2541, meaning that it is in Statutes At Large, volume 90, page 2541. However, most statutes, as enacted, are not very useful to read. They're generally written in a style saying that a prior act is amended by adding certain words or phrases, and deleting others. Without seeing the context of the modified portion, you really can't see what the statute actually does. This problem is handled by statutory codifications. In particular, most U.S. laws are organized into "titles" of the U.S. Code (U.S.C.). Each title governs a particular area of law. For example, Title 17 deals with copyright law. These codifications are periodically updated by taking the original laws and applying the modifications made by subsequent laws so that the result is the text of the law as it is in effect today. In practice, almost every citation to law (including the majority of those in this FAQ) are to the U.S.C., not to the individual public laws. A typical citation to the U.S.C. looks like this: 17 U.S.C. 107. This is a reference to U.S. Code, Title 17, section 107 (which happens to be the fair use provisions of copyright). While there is an official U.S. Code published by the U.S. government, there are two commercially published versions of the code, too. These are West Publishing's U.S. Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) and Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co.'s U.S. Code Service (U.S.C.S.). In practice, because of the private versions are frequently updated, and contain extras such as cross-references to other statutes, cases, law review articles and other resources, they are used far more frequently than the official U.S.C. REGULATIONS: In addition to statutes passed by Congress, law also comes in the form of regulations promulgated by the various federal agencies. In the case of copyright, the regulations we're most interested in are those promulgated by the Copyright Office. Regulations become effective by publication of the regulation in the Federal Register (Fed. Reg.). Like statutes, they are then periodically codified, in this case in the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.). Usually, regulations are cited to the C.F.R. for the same reason that statutes are usually cited to the U.S.C. However, the promulgation documents as published in the Federal Register include not only the regulation itself, but usually information justifying or explaining the regulation, so occasionally the Fed. Reg. citation is used. Here are some examples of citations to a regulation, in this case, to a regulation preventing registration of a copyright in a blank form: 45 Fed. Reg. 63297, 63299 (Sep. 24, 1980). (Federal Register volume 45, beginning on page 63297, with a pinpoint cite to page 63299.) 37 C.F.R. 202.1(c) (1992). (the same regulation, as codified in the C.F.R.) TREATIES: Treaties are compiled in several treaty sources. If the U.S. is a party, the treaty will generally be found in United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (U.S.T.) or Treaties and Other International Acts Series (T.I.A.S.). In some cases (especially with older treaties signed before the State Department took on their publication), they'll be in Statutes at Large; in some case (especially with important newer treaties not yet published by the State Department), they'll be in the private versions of the U.S. Code. If the U.S. is not a party, the treaty won't be in the above sources. It might be found the United Nations Treaty Series (U.N.T.S.) (or the League of Nations Treaty Series (L.N.T.S.) for older treaties), the Pan-American Treaty Series (Pan-Am. T.S.) or European Treaty Series (Europ. T.S.). In addition, treaties may be found in many unofficial compilations, e.g., International Legal Materials (I.L.M.), Basic Documents of International Economic Law (B.D.I.E.L.), Bevans, and Kavass (KAV). This is only a small list of treaty sources. For more sources, see "The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 15th Edition," in particular, table T.4 (Treaty Sources). Generally, treaties are cited in the standard way: volume number, reporter, and page number (e.g., the Berne Convention is 1 B.D.I.E.L. 715). A few series (e.g., T.I.A.S. and Europ. T.S.) are cited by treaty number within the series, with no volume number specified. The document "Treaties In Force" lists all the treaties to which the U.S. is a party, and it lists all the other nations that are also a party. This is a good source to find out if a particular nation is a signatory to a particular treaty. One final note on treaties: In section 4.1, many citations to treaties look like typographical errors: "Art. 6bis" and "Art. 11ter," for example. Well, these aren't typos. "bis," "ter, and "quater" are suffixes derived from the French words for "second," "third," and "fourth," respectively These suffixes are used when a treaty has already been written, and a revision will insert a new article between already existing articles. This avoids the need to renumber the treaty articles, and so provides a consistency between multiple revisions of the treaties. For example, Article 6bis of the Berne Convention is an article that was inserted between Article 6 and Article 7 when the convention text was revised. (This is also the reason why some modems are advertised as supporting the V.32 protocol, while others support V.32bis, in case you've ever wondered.) User Contributions: |
Copyright Law FAQ (6/6): Appendix (a note about legal citation form)
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