''Nimmer on Copyright'' is a multi-volume

legal treatise A legal treatise is a scholarly legal publication containing all the law relating to a particular area, such as criminal law or trusts and estates. There is no fixed usage on what books qualify as a "legal treatise", with the term being used broadl ...

on United States copyright law that is widely cited in American courts, and has been influential for decades as the leading secondary source on American copyright law. The work was originally published in 1963 by

Melville Nimmer Melville Bernard Nimmer (June 6, 1923 – November 23, 1985) was an American lawyer and law professor, renowned as an expert in freedom of speech and United States copyright law. Nimmer graduated from UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Harvard Law School. He w ...

, and was for several decades the only significant treatise in United States copyright law. In 1985, Melville's son

David Nimmer David Nimmer is an American lawyer, law professor, renowned as an expert in United States copyright law. He received an A.B. with distinction and honors in 1977 from Stanford University and his J.D. in 1980 from Yale Law School, where he served as ...

took over updates and revisions to ''Nimmer on Copyright''. The work is routinely cited by domestic and foreign courts at all levels in copyright litigation, and within the United States in at least 2500 judicial opinions. The United States Copyright Office held a special celebration on May 6, 2013, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of ''Nimmer on Copyright''. Similarly, the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. published a special issue of the ''Journal'' dedicated to the 50th anniversary, in Winter 2013.F. Jay Dougherty, "A Story of Two Anniversaries: Nimmer and the Bulletin/Journal of the Copyright Society", 60 ''Journal of the Copyright Society U.S.A.'' 149 (Winter 2013).

Notable cases

In ''

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. ''Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.'', 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be ...

'' the court held that photographs were "writings" within the meaning of the Copyright Clause and cited ''Nimmer on Copyright'', which stated that there "appear to be at least two situations in which a photograph should be denied copyright for lack of originality". Judge Lewis Kaplan considered one of those situations, as described by Nimmer, to be directly relevant, namely that "where a photograph of a photograph or other printed matter is made that amounts to nothing more than slavish copying". A slavish photographic copy of a painting thus, according to Nimmer, lacks originality and thus copyrightability under the U.S. Copyright Act.

Notes

United States copyright law Copyright law literature Legal treatises 1963 non-fiction books 1963 in American law {{law-book-stub