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Sixth Circuit Ruling on 'Atomic Dog' Samples Protects Small Segments of Musical Compositions

The Sixth Circuit for the first time explicitly embraces the "fragmented literal similarity" test for determining whether there is substantial similarity between two works.

14 minute readNovember 25, 2009 at 01:40 PM
By
Stan Soocher
Sixth Circuit Ruling on 'Atomic Dog' Samples Protects Small Segments of Musical Compositions

Only a minimal amount of creativity is required for copyright protection. What that minimum may be has been a recurring issue in copyright litigation, with many battles fought over whether a segment of a song is protectable.

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