1
Response

The Relative Virtues of Bottom-Up and TopDown Theories of Fair Use

Pamela Samuelson
Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Some conceptions of the fair use limitation of US copyright law have their groundings in the case law out of which the doctrine emerged. (I call these the “bottom-up” approaches.) Other theories of fair use have sprung from the very bright minds of copyright scholars whose collective goal has generally been to bring some needed coherence to the common law of fair use. (I call these “top-down” approaches.) The Dual-Grant Theory of Fair Use is the latest of the top-down theories to have appeared in the literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
    Copyright Intellectual Property