"Staple Article": In Defense of Betamax and Its Progeny

The district court judge in University City Studios Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America was at the intersection of new technology and the law in 1979. Sony had developed a new machine, a videotape recorder called Betamax, which could record television broadcasts and store them for later viewing. These mac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Business Lawyer 2004-11, Vol.60 (1), p.417-437
Main Authors: Trope, Roland L., Upchurch, Greg E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Commerce
Commercial courts
Commercial law
Computer software
Copyright
Copyright infringement
Copyrights
Defendants
District courts
Electronics industry
Federal court decisions
Federal district courts
Infringement
Inventors
Judges & magistrates
Laws, regulations and rules
Manycompanies
Patent law
Peer to peer computing
Peer to peer file sharing
Plaintiffs
State court decisions
Surveys
Video tape recorders and recording
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Summary:The district court judge in University City Studios Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America was at the intersection of new technology and the law in 1979. Sony had developed a new machine, a videotape recorder called Betamax, which could record television broadcasts and store them for later viewing. These machines were sold to people who used them to record copyrighted and uncopyrighted material. The Supreme Court stated that the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. The issue of contributory copyright infringement in the context of creation of new technologies usually condenses into 2 questions: 1. Is the technology a staple article of commerce? and 2. Does the technology have a noninfringing use that is substantial? Patent cases are not enlightening on the questions of what makes something a staple article of commerce and as to what constitutes a substantial noninfringing use. In A&M Records v. Napster, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit followed Sony by declining to impute to Napster a knowledge of infringing activity merely because peer-to-peer file sharing technology may be used to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights.
ISSN:0007-6899
2164-1838