Copyrights

Filmmaker Overcomes Supreme Court Setback to Pursue North Carolina for Stealing Footage — Eriq Gardner has the full story about the somewhat remarkable development in Allen v. Cooper, which involves a long running dispute between videographer Frederick Allen and the state of North Carolina over video and images of ... Read More

In retrospect, life was simple in 1996, the year that gave us the Database directive and its much-maligned sui generis right aimed at promoting a European database industry. Fast forward and see: The Database directive stands unchanged and there is still no clear evidence that the then-new intellectual property right ... Read More

The Conservative Party released its election platform yesterday, providing a lengthy document that covers a myriad of policy issues. From a digital policy perspective, there are positions sprinkled throughout the document, covering everything from a new innovation policy (an issue that the Liberals de-emphasized over the past two years and ... Read More

The Supreme Court of Canada recently brought a lengthy legal battle between Access Copyright and York University to an end, issuing a unanimous verdict written by retiring Justice Rosalie Abella that resoundingly rejected the copyright collective’s claims that its tariff is mandatory, finding that it had no standing to file a ... Read More

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Welcome to the second trimester of 2021 round up of EU copyright law! Apologies to readers that this one comes a bit late. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) ... Read More

Instapundit notes an article in the New York Times arguing for the provision for more government gasoline to pour on the fire of IP-overreach — perpetual copyright. Glenn Reynolds... The post Perpetual perfidy appeared first on LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION™. ... Read More

Is an MLB Mascot About to Change Hollywood’s Future? — “Many years later, after the Phanatic became very popular, both sides would dispute the amount of creative direction that the team had given Erickson, but what became important was how Harrison/Erickson obtained a registration from the Copyright Office by ... Read More

In this week’s episode of The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss lawsuits over identifiable tattoos on professional athletes featured in video games, and who owns the copyright to body art. Watch the full video on the Weintraub YouTube Channel here. Listen to the ... Read More

The so-called “conditional irresponsibility” of online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs) with regards to copyright infringements is a never-ending, vexing, and daunting topic not only for scholars (see here, here, here and here), but also for the European Court of Justice itself (CJEU). The latter has recently rendered its eagerly awaited ... Read More

Manhattan judge rejects ‘server test’ for internet copyright infringement — “In Friday’s opinion, Rakoff said the server rule is ‘contrary to the text and legislative history of the Copyright Act,’ which ‘defines “to display” as “to show a copy of” a work, not “to make and then show a ... Read More

In this episode of The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss the Ninth Circuit Ruling on the copyright aspects of Dr. Seuss “mashups.” In the second episode of this two-part series, they discuss the trademark aspects of this case. Watch episode one on the Weintraub Tobin YouTube channel, here. Listen to ... Read More

Last week’s Supreme Court of Canada copyright decision in Access Copyright v. York University has unsurprisingly been applauded by the education community, which having faced years of litigation launched by the copyright collective, now finds its position vindicated. With the court resoundingly rejecting Access Copyright’s claims that its tariff is ... Read More

The Supreme Court of Canada brought a lengthy legal battle between Access Copyright and York University to an end last week, issuing a unanimous verdict written by retiring Justice Rosalie Abella that resoundingly rejected the copyright collective’s claims that its tariff is mandatory, finding that it had no standing to ... Read More

Attributor is a new program that online publishers can and do use to trace their verbal content across the Internet and see who is using... The post No more free ride appeared first on LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION™. ... Read More

In this week’s episode of the Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss recent news stories reporting that police officers played copyrighted music during filmed encounters, ostensibly to keep the videos from being uploaded to the Internet. Scott and Josh discuss how copyright law, the ... Read More

The National Library loses the plot, again — “What’s in the water at the National Library? Is it methylated spirits, or lysergic acid, or somesuch other derangement of the senses? After 12 months of rotten publicity and bitter backlash over its decision to try and dump over 600,000 New Zealand ... Read More

In December 2019, Scott Hervey wrote about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Taylor Swift by the writers of the song “Playas Gon’ Play.”  The song was released by the girl group 3LW in 2001 and included the lyrics “Playa, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate.”  In ... Read More

This week on The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss the copyright lawsuit over a Black Mirror episode starring Miley Cyrus, the plot of which filmmaker Geoffrey Blair Hajim said was lifted from his film “Strange Frame: Love and Sax.” View the episode on ... Read More

Bill S-225, Senator Claude Carignan’s copyright bill, would create a new compensation scheme for media organizations by establishing a new collective rights system for the use of news articles on digital platforms. It may not become law, but it has sparked considerable discussion within the Senate on the issue of ... Read More

Photo by Paul Keller Last week saw the long-awaited publication of Advocate General Saugmangsgaard Øe’s opinion on the Polish request for annulments of parts of Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) before the European Court of Justice (Case C-401/19). While Bernd Justin ... Read More

Copyright Office Announces Appointments of Copyright Claims Board Officers — Click to see which three individuals were named to preside over copyright small claims disputes in the new tribunal. Podcast – IP & Social Justice with Professor Lateef Mtima — Illusion of More’s David Newhoff speaks with Howard University ... Read More

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of news articles and stories about police officers playing popular music during a citizen/officer interaction that is being filmed by the citizen.  For example, Vice reported on a Beverly Hills police officer breaking out his phone and playing over a ... Read More

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay In its long-awaited Opinion on an action brought by Poland to annul certain parts of Article 17 of the Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive), Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe demarcates the borders of permitted filtering of ... Read More

France fines Google $593 million for news copyright violations — “French competition regulators said Tuesday they are fining Google 500 million euros, or roughly $593 million, for failing to comply with copyright rules around negotiating payment terms for news publishers. . . . It’s the latest in a string of competition penalties ... Read More

In this week’s episode of The Briefing from the IP Law Blog, Josh Escovedo and Scott Hervey discuss an update to the litigation over Andy Warhol’s series of portraits of the artist Prince (Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith). They provide a recap of last week’s episode, which covers the Second ... Read More

Copyright Office Releases Report on Best Practice Recommendations for the Mechanical Licensing Collective — The report outlines how the newly established Mechanical Licensing Collective can ensure songwriters are getting the royalties they’ve earned under the new blanket license for digital streaming, focusing on on how the MLC can identify ... Read More

Photo by Simon Harmer on Unsplash It certainly feels like the CDSM Directive has been the hottest topic in copyright law for quite some time now. If we had to be more specific and identify one main protagonist, the answer would unequivocally be: Article 17. Since its birth with the ... Read More

Photo by Mizter_X94 via Pixabay The European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling in joined cases C-682/18 (YouTube) and C-683/18 (Cyando), concerning platform liability for copyright-infringing user uploads under Art. 3 (1) InfoSoc Directive, has been eagerly awaited for a long time. Such a long time – almost a year has ... Read More

In this week’s episode, Josh Escovedo and Scott Hervey discuss the litigation over Andy Warhol’s series of portraits of the artist Prince (Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith). Their discussion covers the Second Circuit decision in favor of Goldsmith, the photographer whose image Warhol used to create the Prince Portraits, and ... Read More

In this week’s episode, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss the complex process of clearing titles for Film and Television. They cover recent high-stakes litigation around entertainment titles, including Stouffer v. National Geographic Partners LLC,  Jon Astor-White v. Daniel Strong (Empire), and the “Honey Badger” case. View the video conversation ... Read More