The Lines of Copyright Infringement Have Always Been Blurred
I swear the title of this post is the only time I'll be making that pun. The “Blurred Lines” case was actually highly unusual because of a key principle of copyright law that has not been discussed much at all: access. When the alleged infringement is “non-literal”...
The Good Lie Lawsuit: Why the Lost Boys’ Copyright Claim Will Fail
Who Owns the Copyright in Your Life Story? Nobody. There is, in my mind, a rebuttable presumption that earnest Hollywood movies are the equivalent of eating overcooked vegetables: you only watch them because they’re good for you, and most of the vitamins have been...
Jersey Boys! Why Sometimes it's Better to Rent Than to Own Copyright
Four Seasons of Legal Pain If you are of a certain age, when you’re old enough to be living on your own but young enough to be content with renting rather than owning your abode, you start to get pressure from well-meaning older folks, like your parents, that you...
Stay With Me on This Because Someone Won’t Back Down: Why Sam Smith Had to Settle
Why Twitter Has Nothing to Fear from Sony
The Attack of the $1200-an-Hour Gorilla Someday, someone will have to explain to me what is so awesome about David Boies. He bills out at something like $1200 an hour, which ought to buy a lot of awesome. But there’s not much awesome about his strategy for suppressing...
Trademark Use in the U.S. and the European Union
I'll keep this one very short as many of you are scrambling to clear off the files on your desk before the Christmas holiday. But when you are looking for a reason to escape the chaos this holiday season, Professor Dr. Axel Nordemann and I have provided you with the...
RightsCorp's Lawsuit Against Cox Is Only Partly About Repeat Infringers
RightsCorp Has Some High Hurdles to Clear Before it Even Gets to Repeat Infringers Typical. I read about a truly significant lawsuit, start blogging about what is obviously the main issue—an issue that has significance beyond the lawsuit—only to discover in analyzing...
Bad Guys and Shake-ups: What you need to know from INTA's Leadership Conference
It took a week to get through the files that were sitting on my desk when I returned, so I let a week go by without writing about the INTA Leadership Meeting that happened in Phoenix, Arizona earlier this month. It was the biggest Leadership Meeting yet, with over...
What Reggaeton-Style Music Can Teach Us About Copyright Licenses
'Tis Often Better to Willfully Withhold Royalties than Exceed the Scope of the License You are a licensee to many, many copyright licenses, whether you know it or not. Most of them—such as the ordinary applications you have on your computer, or song files you’ve...
Case Closed: Sherlock Holmes and the Domain of the Public
Last year we did a thing we don't do very often - told you about a complaint that had been filed before any decision had been issued, in the case of Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate. The issue was whether the characters of Holmes and Watson were in the public domain, or...
Is it Fair Use? Do the TVEyes Have It?
