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Electronic Frontier Foundation: “Since they were enacted in 1998, the ‘anti-circumvention’ provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. Congress meant to stop copyright infringers from defeating anti-piracy protections added to copyrighted works and to ban the ‘black [...] Do fictitious characters have intellectual property rights? Yes argues Geoff Gerber of the Anchor Plate. If you think you can profit from piggy-backing on the fame of Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker or Kermit the Frog, you may be asking for legal trouble. For an interesting discussion of Kermit’s intellectual property rights, see “Character [...] Bloomberg: “Hollywood’s biggest movie studios, including Walt Disney Co. and Paramount Pictures, lost a suit seeking to stop customers of Australia’s Iinet Ltd. from illegally downloading movies in a ruling that may set a precedent for the industry. Iinet, Australia’s third-biggest Internet service provider, didn’t authorize copyright infringements and shouldn’t be held liable [...] Information Week: “A Minnesota woman fined nearly $2 million for illegally downloading music has seen the fine reduced from that ‘monstrous’ amount by a U.S. District Court judge who dropped the fine to $54,000. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother with four children, said she is seeking a way to have the fine — [...] CNN Tech: “When Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel ‘The Lost Symbol’ hit stores in September, it may have offered a peek at the future of bookselling. On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. This was seen as something of a paradigm [...] The Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “The copyright infringement claims brought against Canadian Gary Fung and his .torrent sites have at last been resolved. On December 21, 2009, Judge Wilson of the Central District of California found Fung and several of his .torrent sites liable for inducement of copyright infringement. Wilson’s decision was based [...] The Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “Participants in the P2P world have long hoped that courts would recognize that at least some forms of file sharing constitute fair use. In a recent opinion in the Tenenbaum file-sharing case, Judge Gernter of the District of Massachusetts enumerated several unauthorized uses of copyrighted music thinks might [...] Technology & Marketing Law Blog by Eric Goldman: “Blues Destiny Records, a small Blues music label, doesn’t like RapidShare, a website that allows users to publish files, because users are posting its copyrighted music there. It also doesn’t like that people who search for the label’s artists in Google and Microsoft get search [...] Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “YouTube has been amassing an impressive list of music industry giants who have agreed to license their content for performance on its site. Recent additions to the fold include Warner Music and the UK Performing Rights Society. These are simply two more examples of the recent warming trend in [...] Boing Boing: “A woman who tried out her new pocket camera by video-recording a few minutes of her sister’s surprise birthday party at a showing of ‘New Moon’ has been charged with a felony — ‘camcordering’ a movie.” Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “There has been a lot of recent press touting manufacturers of MAC clones. Clone manufacturers attempt to unlock the tie between Apple software and hardware by selling non-Apple hardware that include copies of Apple’s much-loved software. However, because Apple does not sell copies of its software separately from MAC [...] Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “Living on the west side of Los Angeles puts me smack in the middle of the entertainment industry. I have often seen promotional copies of DVDs of TV shows and feature films or music CDs being exchanged at parties, and even seen stacks of these being left out by [...] MacUser: “Most Americans expect that their laws are only passed after some period of public debate between Republicans and Democrats or their news-channel proxies. However, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) may be an exception to this rule, and if it is signed, many United States laws concerning the Internet and ownership of data [...] London Telegraph: “A Harry Potter themed dinner at a house in West London has been banned by Warner Brothers, because they say it infringes its copyright.” Law.com: “Litigation over the Bratz doll ain’t over yet. The last time we checked in on the big-headed doll controversy, Mattel had won a sweeping injunction against MGA Entertainment in a copyright suit that effectively forced MGA to shut down its Bratz business. The injunction followed a jury’s award of $100 million to [...] Wall St. Journal: “The legal saga over the red, white and blue ‘hope’ image of President Obama has taken an odd twist. Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey now is changing his story about which Associated Press photo he used to create his well-known image during the presidential race.” For more background, [...] Digital Media Law Blog: “When a website designer and host and its customer work together to create a website which — oops! — contains unlicensed copyrighted images, who is liable for the infringement? A recent case found that the answer was ‘Both,’ holding the web designer liable for direct infringement and its customer [...] LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®: Attorney Ron Coleman’s article entitled “Copyright Rules of the Road for Bloggers” is a must read for all bloggers. The article starts on page 3. Wall St. Journal: “We’re going on a limb this afternoon to say the biggest battle over fonts ─ ever ─has broken out in New York federal court. NBC has been sued by the Font Bureau Inc., a typographic design firm, which alleges that the network infringed the firm’s fonts in marketing material used [...] Professor Bridget J. Crawford of the Pace University School of Law and Professor Mitchell Gans of Hofstra University School of Law article focuses on the federal estate and gift tax treatment of copyright termination rights. The right of a creative individual to terminate prior copyright transfers serves to protect against economic [...] Law.com: “Over the past six years, the record industry has successfully sued thousands of people in the United States for illegally downloading copyrighted songs. . . Soon, though, the major labels are going to have a different copyright battle on their hands — one that will pit them not against those who want [...] The Volokh Conspiracy: “When I was a law student, a professor asked us whether we believed law and morals were co-extensive: if the law did not prohibit certain conduct, did that mean it was moral to engage in it? One of the comments on my first post similarly asked how I distinguished effective [...] San Francisco Chronicle: “A Stanford professor who battled James Joyce’s estate for the right to quote family documents in research on one of the author’s most celebrated works will get $240,000 from the estate for her legal fees, the university said Monday. Carol Shloss’ settlement with Joyce’s heirs ends a court case in [...] Wall St. Journal: “The heirs of late comic-book creator Jack Kirby served 45 copyright-termination notices to Marvel Entertainment Inc., Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood studios relating to comic-book characters and stories created by Mr. Kirby, including ‘X-Men’ and ‘The Fantastic Four.’” See also the New York Times story “After Disney-Marvel Deal, [...] |
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