Here’s a Poser: Can You Protect a Pose?
You Can Strike a Pose, but Can a Pose Be Striking? Ages ago, I started off my copyright courses with a couple of old but good photography cases, as a way of stretching the students’ minds about what constitutes “copying” and what constitutes “creativity.” The first...
Tom Brady, I Choose You! How the Tweet-Embedding Decision Is Both Disturbing and Intriguing
We Don’t Serve Your Kind Here Wow, there have been a lot of really interesting copyright cases in just the last two or three weeks! It’s like being a candy store with money, but you’re full. I’ll try to comment on some of them. Let’s start with the one that really...
Despite Cox-up, Cox Gets Half a Chance
Dim Light Shed on Our Understanding of DMCA Repeat-Infringer Requirement This post is about BMG Rights Management v. Cox Communications, a case about which I’ve posted at least four times: here, here, here and indirectly here. Note my evolving take on the...
Is it Fair Use? Photography and Creative Commons Edition
Does Distributing a Work Under Creative Commons Mean That Your Work Has No Economic Value? A professional photographer finds a political website has used his photographs of celebrities in concert to show that the celebrities agree with the website's viewpoint. He...
If Goliath Goes After David in a Copyright Case, Does it Matter that David Is a Cheater?
How Far Should a Publisher Go to Stop Cheating in a Massively Multiplayer Game? How I wish I had time to play computer games. Heck, how I wish my children had time to play them (other than Minecraft, of course, which remains very popular with my younger child),...
Startups, Keep Your Trademark Registrations Fresh
How Some Crummy T-Shirts & a College You Probably Never Heard of Might Inform Your Trademark Strategy Let’s say you started your company up several years ago. You called it BLERGLE. Back then, your company was a software development shop. Because you’re you, you...
Netflix sends hilarious cease and desist letter. But should it have?
It has been a welcome development in the art of cease-and-desist and demand-letter writing lately: Rather than a stern warning with paragraphs of statutory citations and threats of “treble” and punitive damages to the moon, companies have had their counsel user...
Copyright Law Can Spice Up Anything: The Surprising Scope of Copyright Protection
The Thick and Thin of Copyright Protection Copyright lawyers love tell you that copyright law is all about encouraging creativity because that makes it seem that we’re performing some sort of socially useful activity. We love to point to paintings, novels, movies and...
WOO! What Bachelorette Parties in Nashville Can Teach You About Trademarks and Trademark Registrations
A PEDAL TAVERN by Any Other Name Would Still Be as Annoying On my way back to Nashville (from Los Angeles) last week, I found myself in the back of the plane with not one, but two bachelorette parties. It wasn’t quite noon (Pacific time), but several of the members...
Register whatever the F*&# you want: Victory for the Slants and the First Amendment
The Lanham Act had some language struck out of it by the Supreme Court today. In the trademark world, this qualifies as Big News. A superbrief history: The Slants are a band out of California made up entirely of Asian Americans. Simon Tam, the lead singer, filed an...
A Registered Weak Trademark Is Still a Weak Trademark: How to Build Up a Strong Trademark
Trademark Registrations Are Important, but Not the Way Many Markholders Think In my high school “health and guidance” class, I was taught that you can’t sober up a drunk with coffee. All you get, I was told, was a wide-awake drunk. Although now stimulated, the guy’s...
Gambling Away from the Track: Trademark Confusion and Horse Racing in the 6th Circuit
It’s Derby time! I don’t live in Louisville, but I used to spend a lot of time there for work, and when I was in college at Vanderbilt University, the Kentucky Derby would always be the Saturday right after finals ended and was only a two hour drive up I-65. As poor...
