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1985 United States Supreme Court case
Dowling v. United States , 473 U.S. 207 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case that discussed whether copies of copyrighted works could be regarded as stolen property for the purposes of a law which criminalized the interstate transportation of property that had been "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" and holding that they could not be so regarded under that law.[ 1]
Background
Paul Edmond Dowling ran a
Burbank, Los Angeles County, California
.
Dowling's trial and appeals
The federal government brought its initial case against Dowling in the
mail fraud
. The charges of mail fraud arose out of his use of the United States Postal Service to distribute the records.
Dowling appealed all convictions besides those of copyright infringement and the case moved to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals , where he argued that the goods he was distributing were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud", according to the language of 18 U.S.C. 2314 - the interstate transportation statute under which he was convicted. The court disagreed, affirming the original decision and upholding the conviction. Dowling then took the case to the Supreme Court, which sided with his argument and reversed the convictions. From the Reporter of Decision's syllabus:
The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
See also
References
External links
Dormant Commerce Clause
Brown v. Maryland (1827)
Willson v. Black-Bird Creek Marsh Co. (1829)
Cooley v. Board of Wardens (1852)
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois (1886)
Swift & Co. v. United States (1905)
George W. Bush & Sons Co. v. Malloy (1925)
Baldwin v. G.A.F. Seelig, Inc. (1935)
Edwards v. California (1941)
Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona (1945)
Dean Milk Co. v. City of Madison (1951)
Miller Bros. Co. v. Maryland (1954)
Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, Inc. (1959)
National Bellas Hess v. Illinois (1967)
Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc. (1970)
Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp. (1976)
Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady (1977)
Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission (1977)
City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey (1978)
Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland (1978)
Reeves, Inc. v. Stake (1980)
Kassel v. Consolidated Freightways Corp. (1981)
Sporhase v. Nebraska ex rel. Douglas (1982)
White v. Mass. Council of Construction Employers (1983)
South-Central Timber Development, Inc. v. Wunnicke (1984)
Maine v. Taylor (1986)
Healy v. Beer Institute, Inc. (1989)
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Oregon Waste Systems, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Quality of Oregon (1994)
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Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. v. Thomas
(2019)
National Pork Producers Council v. Ross (2023)
Others
Copyright Act of 1790 Patent Act of 1793 Patent infringement case lawPatentability case lawCopyright Act of 1831 Copyright Act of 1870 Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
International Copyright Act of 1891 Copyright Act of 1909 Patent misuse case lawClayton Antitrust Act of 1914 Lanham Act
Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc. (1982)
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Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises (1985)
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Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. (1994)
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (1994)
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