The Artful Jurist

This being Martin Luther King Day, I'm reminded not only of the famed civil rights leader and the words of his renowned "I Have a Dream" speech but also of the intellectual property issues that speech has raised for the arts and entertainment industry.

You see, Dr. King registered the speech with the U.S. Copyright Office. (This was 1963 when formal copyright registration was necessary to the process of claiming a copyright.) Since then, various people have attempted to republish the speech, either in text or video/sound recording, only to find that the heirs to Dr. King's estate are quick to put the legal kibosh on unauthorized uses.

In King v. Mister Maestro, Inc., a federal court issued an injunction to stop both Mister Maestro and 20th Century Fox from distributing recordings of the speech they were selling to the general public. The King estate also sued USA Today and CBS over their uses of the speech or its text.

Note that there is a fair use exception to copyright when portions of a public speech are republished for the purpose of what's called "bono fide new reporting." However, other purposes -- such as documentary filmmaking, where the line between news and entertainment is blurred to make it more of the latter than of the former -- the fair use exception may not come into play.