Copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing

In copyright law, the legal status of hyperlinking (also termed "linking") and that of framing concern how courts address two different but related Web technologies. In large part, the legal issues concern use of these technologies to create or facilitate public access to proprietary media content — such as portions of commercial websites. When hyperlinking and framing have the effect of distributing, and creating routes for the distribution of content (information) that does not come from the proprietors of the Web pages affected by these practices, the proprietors often seek the aid of courts to suppress the conduct, particularly when the effect of the conduct is to disrupt or circumvent the proprietors' mechanisms for receiving financial compensation. The issues about linking and framing have become so intertwined under copyright law that it is impractical to attempt to address them separately. As will appear, some decisions confuse them with one another, while other decisions involve and therefore address both. Framing involves the use of hyperlinking, so that any challenge of framing under copyright law is likely to involve a challenge of hyperlinking as well. While hyperlinking occurs in other technologies, U.S. copyright litigation has centered on HTML. Accordingly, this article considers only such technology. The HTML code for a simple, ordinary hyperlink is shown below. A home page link would be written this way: USPTO Most websites are organized hierarchically, with a home page at the top and deeper pages within the site, reached by links on the home page. Deep linking is the practice of using a hyperlink that takes a user directly to a page other than the top or home page. The link given below is a deep link. General information concerning patents A typical Internet browser would render the foregoing HTML code as: When a user clicks on the underlined text, the browser jumps from the page on which the link is shown to a page of the website of the U.