Page:United States Reports, Volume 545.djvu/1002

 , J., concurring the machine for infringing purposes as well, such as building libraries of taped copyrighted programs. Or, the buyer might use the machine to record copyrighted programs under circumstances in which the legal status of the act of recording was uncertain (i.e., where the copying may, or may not, have constituted a “fair use,” id., at 425–426). Sony knew many customers would use its VCRs to engage in unauthorized copying and “ ‘library-building.’ ” Id., at 458–459 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). But that fact, said the Court, was insufficient to make Sony itself an infringer. And the Court ultimately held that Sony was not liable for its customers’ acts of infringement.

In reaching this conclusion, the Court recognized the need for the law, in fixing secondary copyright liability, to “strike a balance between a copyright holder’s legitimate demand for effective—not merely symbolic—protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce.” Id., at 442. It pointed to patent law’s “staple article of commerce” doctrine, ibid., under which a distributor of a product is not liable for patent infringement by its customers unless that product is “unsuited for any commercial noninfringing use.” Dawson Chemical Co. v. Rohm & Haas Co., 448 U.S. 176, 198 (1980). The Court wrote that the sale of copying equipment, “like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” Sony, 464 U.S., at 442 (emphasis added). The Court ultimately characterized the legal “question” in the particular case as “whether [Sony’s VCR] is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses” (while declining to give “precise content” to these terms). Ibid. (emphasis added).

It then applied this standard. The Court had before it a survey (commissioned by the District Court and then prepared by the respondents) showing that roughly 9% of all