INDUCE: Patent

July 22, 2004 on 10:33 pm | In Copyrights |

Chris Rush Cohen and I exchanged e-mails earlier today about the new Induce Act. He mentioned that Kevin Heller (Tech Law Advisor), Andrew Raff (IPTA), and Cohen have joined together to jointly blog a Induce Act blog.

Honestly, I can’t say that I had been paying much attention to the Induce Act…until Chris prompted me. For those of you who aren’t familiar…here we go:

Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004

A BILL

To amend chapter 5 of title 17, United States Code, relating to inducement of copyright infringement, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004′.

SEC. 2. INTENTIONAL INDUCEMENT OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Section 501 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces’ means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.

`(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer.

`(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.’.

Of course, this isn’t anything new to patent law…we get patent infringement by inducement via 35 U.S.C. 271(b). Honestly, I don’t know that inducement is used much in patent litigation….

However, the average person in this digital age “touches” Copyrights all day long. Let’s say I find an interesting article (on patent law of course) online, and blog about it…providing a link where people can download it…and the document later turns out to be an infringement…am I now guilty of inducing the infringement? What about Google? iPods? TiVos?

Yikes. Maybe I should pay better attention….maybe I should blog some on patent inducement…stay tuned.

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