Guest Post - Creative Commons in Court - The Scholarly Kitchen

Today, I’m not going to enter the debate over open access and open culture; I will neither criticize nor advocate for CC licenses. Rather, I’m interested in how US federal courts evaluate infringement claims and determine statutory damages in cases related to works released under the licenses. In a recent study, I examined about two dozen cases, with initial filing dates running from December 2014 through October 2018, retrieved from the database Westlaw. Although some of the cases on which I base this discussion deal with works released under previous versions of the CC licenses, these do not differ significantly from the current version, 4.0 International. Here, I present a high-level overview of that study for anyone who engages with CC licenses: creators and users, publishing professionals and library professionals, advocates for and skeptics of open culture. Readers seeking more details may consult “The Interpretation of Creative Commons Licenses by US Federal Courts.”