Lawsuits over the legality of framing another site's content started to spring up within months of the introduction by Netscape of the feature. While such lawsuits might argue a combination of copyright, trademark, and misappropriation charges, much of the attention from the legal community is focused on the copyright law concept called "derivative work".

Possessing the sole right to create and authorize derivative works is one of the important protections provided under copyright law. This might include collecting copyrighted songs on a compilation album, publishing a book of copyrighted magazine articles or similar "new uses".

The key legal question, however, is does framing someone else's copyrighted website constitute a "derivative work"? If it does, then copyright law should support requiring permission to frame. Unfortunately, the courts seem a long way from providing the Web with a ruling in this matter.

Washington Post Co. v. Total News (where a number of publishers jointly sued a site that framed over a thousand different online news sources) settled before the host of issues it addressed could be heard. More recently (in Futuredontics Inc. v. Applied Anagramics Inc.), a judge denied a preliminary injunction to stop Futuredontics' website from being framed because there was insufficient evidence that "a framed link creates a derivative work."

Song composers and magazine publishers might need to rely upon the courts to protect their interests in these matters (since their copyrighted materials "leave their control"). On the Web, though, you can exact whatever control you want. In this case, a little JavaScript is worth more than a roomful of lawyers.