This short paper explains how two time-honored principles of tort law - proximate cause and culpability - might clarify and rationalize the law of secondary liability for intellectual-property (IP) infringement. It begins by analyzing how Judge Cardozo's classic opinion in Palsgraf used these...

For the first time ever, the Supreme Court's seminal decision in Grokster permits the theory of secondary liability in copyright law to be rationalized. That case confirmed two important principles: (1) that secondary liability in copyright is a matter of federal common law; and (2) that, unlike...