Limited Times, LLC is a legal tech company focused on making complex legal research accessible using humans + code. It originated out of work conducted at Tulane University. Through our products and services, we aim to provide legal research that that helps demystify law by making complicated legal information accessible, unbiased, and affordable.

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What is the Durationator?

 

The Durationator is a software and research system that provides legal information regarding the copyright status of any work in any jurisidiction in the world. 

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Why Do We Need a Software System to Determine a Simple Question?

 

New technologies have made copyright law and its related issues far more complicated than ever before. 

 

Digitizing. The development of technologies to digitally reproduce or scan works, often now being done on a large scale, gives rise to a host of issues. Once an individual or an organization, such as a library or museum, scans particular works, what are they subsequently permitted to do with those properties? The copyright status of a work is a key determiner of the answer to that question.

 

We are all creators. Each of us individually, more than ever before, is implicated in the copyright system. It used to be predominately publishers who could publish a novel or movie studios that could make a movie. Now, thanks to new technologies and new means of distribution—in a word, the Internet—not only are we all much greater consumers of cultural properties, but even more significantly we all now regularly are much greater creators and distributors of those works. Individually and on a regular basis, we digitize, we 'mashup,' we repackage, and we exchange works. Consequently, the cultural field of production to which copyright law applies has grown tremendously, with all of us being much greater participants in that field.

 

Global. The geographic interests of users and creators similarly have expanded to a global scale by these same technologies and dynamics. The Internet allows individual users local access to works originating from around the globe. Likewise, creators and originators of works regularly wish to make them available worldwide via the Internet. The copyright status of these properties is implicated in all of these instances, often being a key determiner of the opportunities available for legal use and for enforceable protections. 

 

Clearly, the determination of a work's copyright status is more significant than ever before. Yet oftentimes making such a determination for a given work is a very complicated matter, due in no small part to the fact that while our cultural activities regularly now are global, copyright law remains based in country-by-country analyses, sorting laws, histories, agreements, and the like in order to arrive at an accurate and definitive determination of a work's copyright status.

 

The Durationator software system does this hard work for you, making a complicated problem easy. That's what the Durationator does—it quickly, accurately, and unbiasedly determines the copyright status of any work anywhere in the world and provides legal information on the "limited Times" status of that work. Simple.

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About Our Company Name, Limited Times

 

Limited Times refers to the duration of a limited monopoly given by the federal government to the author of a work—the duration of the copyright. The Durationator is able to determine that Constitutionally protected "limited Times." But determining the moment when a work goes from protected by copyright to part of the public domain, "free as the common air," can be very complicated. That is the direct reference of our name.

 

Limited Times likewise refers to present conditions, a world that is filled with obligations, needs, and quick results. Our software system and methods of research allow attorneys and others to quickly gather primary documents, the laws of many jurisdictions, and basic legal information as they pertain to invdividually identified works. Consequently, one's valuable, limited time can be focused on analyzing the legal research, not gathering it.

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