Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin
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Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001) was decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) against the owner of Gone With the Wind, vacating an injunction prohibiting the publisher of The Wind Done Gone from distributing the book. This case stands for the principle that the creation and publication of a carefully-written parody novel in the United States counts as fair use. As such, it follows the previous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music which ruled that 2 Live Crew's unlicensed use of the bass line from Roy Orbison's song "Oh, Pretty Woman" constituted fair use under copyright law and extends that principle from songs to novels and is binding precedent in the Eleventh Circuit.
The reasoning of the case is also significant as it is the first time an federal appellate court in the United States has invoked the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as a basis for the protection of fair use.
External links
- Text of the case (http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/11th/0112200opnv2.html)
- Locating Copyright within the First Amendment Skein (http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/nnetanel/Netanel.pdf) by N. W. Netanel 54 Stanford Law Review 101