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 William Patry has authored a new 7 volume (no appendices), 5,830 page    treatise on copyright  that West just published. The treatise is unusual in a lot respects. It is an extremely comprehensive treatise on copyright and Mr. Patry believes it is one of  the largest legal treatises ever written by a single individual.

Mr. Patry has a diverse background, which is reflected in the treatise. He is presently Senior Copyright Counsel to Google Inc., but was also a full-time law professor at Cardozo Law School for 5 years, copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives (3 and a half years), a Policy Planning Advisor to the Register of Copyrights (4 and a half years), and he spent 12 years in private practice litigating copyright cases. The treatise reflects all these experiences and has a foreword by Justice O’Connor and an endorsement by former Solictor General of the United States Walter Dellinger.

Mr. Patry previously published a separate treatise on fair use. That treatise is incorporated into, revised, and updated into this new work as chapter 10, which also contains an extensive discussion of library photocopying.  He has also co-written an article on fair use with Judge Posner, and the book’s chapter on remedies reflects his influence as well as those of a number of other appellate judges who have looked at sections.

In many chapters, Mr. Patry has broken down either discussions or footnotes by circuit so that lawyers throughout the country will be able to see regional differences. Outside of the normal practice chapters, there are large chapters on statutory interpretation and on choice of law/customary international law  The book is also chock full of wikipedia references, anecdotes, riffs on logic, congitive linguistics, etc.  It is many books in one and attempts to rethink both copyright and treatise writing.

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