Copyright Law Research Guide

FIRST STEP:  Look for Law Review and Journal articles.

Be sure to look at: 

• Google Scholar - Searches for both legal scholarly articles as well as articles from other disciplines, such as music, art, communications and mass media, education, librarianship  etc.  Finds articles on some databases the library pays to access, such as Jstor and Heinonline.  Does not search Lexis or Westlaw materials.

and

• Lexis Law Reviews and Journals   OR  Westlaw Secondary Sources (and limit to law reviews).  Possibly search both, as each has different search algorithms.  Try an advanced search, using the TItle field if you get too many results.  Once you find a good law review article- keycite or shepardize the article to find more articles on point!

and 

• SSRN - Social Science Research Network.  This database is free on the Internet.  It contains published as well as PRE-PUBLICATION articles and UNPUBLISHED articles.

If you are doing HISTORICAL RESEARCH look at:

Indexes provide a different way of searching:

Another great FREE source that includes published, unpublished and prepublication scholarly legal articles: