Austin Padgett's The Rhetoric of Predictability: Reclaiming the Lay Ear in Music Copyright Infringement Litigation won the Second Annual Pierce Law Student Symposium, held April 17. The grand prize was $350 and the opportunity to publish in Pierce Law Review. The other finalists were Krum Chuchev's Are the Mini Mental State Examination Forms Under Enforceable Copyright Protection, and if so, What are the Physician's Options and Jonathan Raymond's Is Kelo a Pandora's Box for Patent Law? The Supreme Court's New Take on "Takings". The contest was established to encourage students other than those on Law Review to write publishable work.
Papers were judged by:
Judge Paul Barbadoro, United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire
Judge Carol Ann Conboy, New Hampshire Superior Court
Justice James Duggan, New Hampshire Supreme Court
Mark Sisti, Sisti Law Offices
Dan Will, Devine, Millimet & Branch, P.A.
Padgett's paper focused on the question of whether juries can be trusted as triers of fact in cases relating to music copyrights, due to the sophistication of the subject matter and alleged lack thereof among jury members. Lay juries make less predictable decisions about the similarity of musical works than professionals would. Similarity is based on the composition, not recordings of a song. And as with all copyright-protected material, it is the expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves, which are protected. Two basic kinds of reform proposals have been put forward. One is for procedural change: who determines the similarity of compositions? Substantive change would be less radical because a jury would still be the trier of fact, but what constitutes "similarity" would change.
Papers were judged by:
Judge Paul Barbadoro, United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire
Judge Carol Ann Conboy, New Hampshire Superior Court
Justice James Duggan, New Hampshire Supreme Court
Mark Sisti, Sisti Law Offices
Dan Will, Devine, Millimet & Branch, P.A.
Padgett's paper focused on the question of whether juries can be trusted as triers of fact in cases relating to music copyrights, due to the sophistication of the subject matter and alleged lack thereof among jury members. Lay juries make less predictable decisions about the similarity of musical works than professionals would. Similarity is based on the composition, not recordings of a song. And as with all copyright-protected material, it is the expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves, which are protected. Two basic kinds of reform proposals have been put forward. One is for procedural change: who determines the similarity of compositions? Substantive change would be less radical because a jury would still be the trier of fact, but what constitutes "similarity" would change.
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