PRECEDENT IS NOT DEAD, BUT IT CERTAINLY STILL IS PAST: Following up on Matt's story from October, a federal district court judge in Mississippi has tossed on fair use grounds the William Faulkner estate's copyright suit over the borrowing of a nine-word aphorism in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris: "The copyrighted work is a serious piece of literature lifted for use in a speaking part in a movie comedy, as opposed to a printed portion of a novel printed in a newspaper, or a song’s melody sampled in another song. This transmogrification in medium tips this factor in favor of transformative, and thus, fair use."
ETA, by Matt: Please also note that the full opinion thanks the parties that they "did not ask the court to compare The Sound and the Fury to Sharknado," thus guaranteeing that "Sharknado" will have at least one hit in ALLFEDS searches.
