Which area of intellectual property law did this case
address?
a& m records inc. v. napster inc.
during the early 2000s, music fans freely shared their
favorite songs online. every day, they went to napster
and other peer-to-peer music sharing services to
exchange thousands and thousands of mp3 files. they
had access to almost every type of music and artist. there
was just one problem. no one was paying for anything.
musicians, songwriters, producers, and record companies
were losing millions of dollars.
so a& m records and other companies affiliated with the
recording industry association of america filed a lawsuit
against napster and its creator shawn fanning. (fanning
was a college student at northeastern university when he
began the file sharing service in 1999.) the suit accused
napster of contributory and vicarious copyright
infringement. the case landed in the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit. there, napster was
found guilty on both counts, and the site was forced to shut down in 2002. several years later, a similar file-sharing service known as grokster also had to cease operations when the supreme court tyler against it in mgm v. grokster.

Zachary company produces commercial gardening equipment. since production is highly automated, the company allocates its overhead costs to product lines using activity-based costing. the costs and cost drivers associated with the four overhead activity cost pools follow: activities unit level batch level product level facility level cost $ 64,800 $ 27,730 $ 15,000 $ 154,000 cost driver 2,400 labor hrs. 47 setups percentage of use 11,000 units production of 780 sets of cutting shears, one of the company’s 20 products, took 240 labor hours and 7 setups and consumed 15 percent of the product-sustaining activities. required: (a) had the company used labor hours as a company wide allocation base, how much overhead would it have allocated to the cutting shears? (b) how much overhead is allocated to the cutting shears using activity-based costing? (c) compute the overhead cost per unit for cutting shears first using activity-based costing and then using direct labor hours for allocation if 780 units are produced. if direct product costs are $150 and the product is priced at 30 percent above cost for what price would the product sell under each allocation system? (d) assuming that activity-based costing provides a more accurate estimate of cost, indicate whether the cutting shears would be over- or underpriced if direct labor hours are used as an allocation base. explain how over-or undercosting can affect vaulker's profitability. (e) comment on the validity of using the allocated facility-level cost in the pricing decision. should other costs be considered in a cost- plus pricing decision? if so, which ones? what costs would you include if you were trying to decide whether to accept a special order?