re nutek faces apple s wrath article read in article mar leland stanford edu tedebear leland stanford edu theodore chen writes there isn t any copyright equivalent of the res ipsa doctrine but there s something kind of similar to show infringement one element you need to show is that the defendant copied from your work if you re lucky you ll have direct evidence of copying the smoking gun normally you do this through circumstantial evidence by showing evidence of access from which one might reasonably infer copying this evidence of access is considered along with the similarities between the two works in deciding whether you copied however if the similarities are so strong as to be striking an inference of copying may be drawn even without any evidence that the defendant had access to your copyrighted work in that case the burden will be on the defendant to rebut the inference of copying for example evidence that he d been on a desert island for the last ten years and had no contact with civilization wow now we know why lawyers are rich and computer scientists are poor lawyers have to sound as if they understand this stuff
