Court won’t hear National Geographic CD-ROM case - Yahoo! News [pdf]

The

U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a ruling that copyright law authorized a publisher to reproduce a collective work in CD-ROM format, even if some new materials have been added.

The justices declined to review a dispute involving

National Geographic magazine and whether it had to pay freelance writers and photographers additional compensation for using their work in the electronic compilation.

[...] The appeals court ruled that the CDs represented an “electronic replica” of the magazine and were a permissible “revision” under copyright law, even if some new copyrightable materials, such as an introductory sequence and a computer software program, had been added.

The freelance contributors appealed to the Supreme Court to hear the case. But the justices rejected the appeal without any comment or recorded dissent.

The order list — see page 4)

Would an industry like this even exist? Accessories for iPod: To the tune of $300m [pdf]

A rich ecosystem has taken root around the iPod, fed by a dizzying array of accessories — more than 1,000 — that extend the reach and versatility of the device well beyond its native form as an already impressive mobile music and video player.

[...] The iPod accessories market has become a powerhouse in its own right, to the tune of more than $300 million annually, and sales of such products are growing faster, on a percentage basis, than the device itself, said Gavin Downey, a director of product management at accessory maker Belkin Corp., in Compton, Calif.

In the early days of the iPod, he noted, there was a relatively low ”attach rate” from the unit. For every 15 to 20 iPods sold, one unit of accessories moved. Today, it’s almost a one-to-one ratio.