Sunday, March 25, 2007

Joyce Case Settles (UPDATED)

Stanford Professor Carol Schloss's copyright "misuse" lawsuit against the James Joyce estate has been settled. The AP report is here. Lawprof Alfred Yen is disappointed: "the lack of final judgment preserves the ambiguity that copyright holders sometimes exploit to stifle criticism they don't like."

My most recent post on the case, after the complaint survived a motion to dismiss last month, is here.

UPDATE: More disappointment from lawprof William McGeveran: "This case was exciting precisely because it seemed like a good prospect to get some binding case law on the books about the scope of fair use for historians and literary scholars. A settlement doesn’t count as 'the law' in the same way at all. ... This is the famous ethical quandary of all lawyers involved in 'impact litigation' — you are using one person’s problems as a vehicle to change the law, but your first and greatest duty is to the client. Often, if you can get a great settlement, then you have to forego the larger-scale legal change you’d sought."