#fanlaw

A thrilling “where some courts have gone before but it’s awesome every time” ruling out of Los Angeles today, as a trial court found that the mashup of Dr Seuss and Star Trek entitled “Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go” is a transformative work, protected by the Fair Use doctrine, and not a copyright infringement.
Salient sections of the ruling include:
“Although Defendants certainly borrowed from Go!—at times liberally—the elements borrowed were always adapted or transformed. The Court therefore concludes … that Defendants’ work, while commercial, is highly transformative.
Plaintiff’s argument that Boldly is a derivative work misses the mark, as a derivative work is not foreclosed from being transformative (or constituting a fair use).”
Page 31 of the ruling discusses the purpose of the Copyright Act, which is seemingly sometimes forgotten by copyright owners: “[T]he primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work.”
The ruling strongly supports fanworks, follow-on creativity and parodies (even though this work wasn’t one).  Yes, it’s only a trial court ruling, and it can be appealed, but it sets out the law sensibly and structurally and hopefully will be upheld if it goes up on appeal. 

There’s more discussion of it on Twitter and you can read the entire ruling here.