Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was accused in 2013 of giving a speech that copied material from the Wikipedia description of the 1997 movie “Gattaca.”Ĭase Would Turn on Substantial SimilarityĪssuming one figured who - Michelle Obama herself, her husband, a speechwriter or the Obama re-election campaign, as the speechwriter’s employer - held the rights, the question would become whether the speech qualified for protection as an original and creative work of expression fixed in a perceivable medium. It even happened to President Obama during the 2008 campaign, when Hillary Clinton accused him of copying part of a speech by Massachusetts Gov. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) gave a speech in an unsuccessful re-election bid in the 2012 election and parts of a speech were allegedly taken from an old speech by former Sen. It happened to Vice President Joe Biden, when he ran for president in the 1988 campaign and critics said he used a quote from British politician Neil Kinnock without attribution. Schechter guessed that the ultimate owner of the copyright would be President Barack Obama, because it was his campaign that employed the speech writers for Michelle Obama’s 2008 address.Ĭribbing of Political Speeches Not UnknownĮvery once in a while, political candidates have to confront allegations that a political speech has been cribbed from somewhere. “The copyright in any particular passage would presumptively belong to the person who penned that passage unless the work was a work made for hire.” “It is likely that Michelle had help writing the speech,” Roger Schechter, a copyright law professor at George Washington University, told Bloomberg BNA. The same would go for any speech writers who worked on the address.
So, a court would have to decide whether Michelle Obama, as the wife of a then-senator running for president, was a government employee and whether speaking at the 2008 Democratic National Convention was part of her job duties. Scott Austin, a copyright lawyer with the VLP Law Group LLP, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said that a federal government employee speaking within the scope of his or her employment can’t claim copyright in a speech. One of the first questions to ask would be who exactly would hold any copyright in Obama’s 2008 speech. And, unlike plagiarism, it protects only specific expression, not ideas.Īpplying the standards of copyright law to Melania Trump’s speech would bring into play several very close questions, scholars and practitioners told Bloomberg BNA. Unlike plagiarism, copyright law doesn’t turn on the question of giving credit.
Copying someone’s ideas without attribution, as well as copying his or her words, can give rise to a charge of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a standard for giving credit to the work of others created and policed by educational institutions, and other sources of societal norms. The difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement important when considering whether Trump’s speech could give rise to a successful legal action. “Whether it is copyright infringement is a harder question.” University and an intellectual property scholar, told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail message. Lemley, a law professor at Leland Stanford Jr. “It is almost certainly plagiarism,” Mark A. Aside from the plagiarism allegations, though, is the infringement question - and that’s a much tougher one to answer, legal experts say. Trump’s campaign has denied any intentional plagiarism by Melania Trump, according to Bloomberg News. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Amid the debate raging over whether some of Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech was cribbed from a 2008 Michelle Obama address, there’s an overlooked legal question: whether there wasn’t just copying, but copyright infringement.