What does "limited fact pattern" mean?

[breakaway]

This was in discussion with regards to copyrights and law.

 

[quincy]

A fact pattern is a description of the facts of a situation, or a summary of what took place. A fact pattern is a presentation of facts.

Fact patterns are often used on law school exams, to test a student's knowledge of the law and to test how well a student can apply case law to the facts given to determine a legal outcome.

A student, for example, must first "weed out" the facts that have no relevance, then the student must determine what state or federal laws apply and what case law could relate to the facts given, determining in the process what it is about the case law that matches the facts given and how the case law differs from the facts given.

In the practice of law, you will always start with certain facts and you must work your case from these facts, applying the appropriate law to the given facts and working the case law to your client's advantage.

In a copyright infringement action, you will have a copyrighted work and a copyright owner claiming infringement and the person accused of infringing on the work. You must start with the indisputable facts (ie. the work was registered on such and such a date by the copyright owner, etc.) and build either a case for infringement (exact copy, substantially similar, etc.) or a defense against it (fair use, independent creation, etc). You will use copyright law and case law to support whatever your claim is.

There are also certain inferences that can be drawn from certain facts given - for instance, you are told that an artist accused of infringment had just been to a gallery where the infringed work was prominently displayed by the entrance. It can be inferred by the fact that he went to the gallery that he saw the copyrighted work in the gallery, although there is no proof that he saw it.

So, all of the facts involved in the infringement action would be a fact pattern and it is an attorney's job to make sense of these facts in a way that helps his client win a case.

A limited fact pattern would mean you have only limited facts available on which to build your case and determine your preferred legal outcome.

You can wait for divgradcurl, a lawyer, to post with any corrections here.

Are you taking law classes, breakaway?

 

[divgradcurl]

I am not sure this really means anything on its own. What is the context?