Access Denied

The plaintiff in a copyright infringement case need prove only two elements: the plaintiffs ownership of a subsisting copyright and the defendant's copying of protectible elements from that work. The first element is trivially easy. Any hack who writes a screenplay, any software engineer who composes a subroutine, and any five-year-old who finger-paints on the kitchen table acquires a federal statutory copyright in her handiwork, subsisting for at least seventy years and perhaps well over a century. Therefore, to the extent that any dikes hold back the floodwaters of copyright litigation, they must arise out of the second element.