Andrew Albanese writes: “US Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter concluded that a court would likely find Maryland’s recently passed library ebook law to be preempted by federal copyright law under a legal doctrine known as ‘conflict preemption.’ But in her nine-page opinion, Perlmutter did not find the Maryland law to be ‘expressly’ preempted by the Copyright Act, as opponents of the law have contended, and conceded that the cases she used to reach her ‘conflict preemption’ determination (which relies heavily on a 1999 decision in Orson Inc. v. Miramax) may not be a perfect fit.”