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IP BLAWG
Valiant Fight Against the Copyright Act’s Deposit Requirement
In Brief: The US Copyright cannot demand the deposit of a physical copy of a work for registration.
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IP BLAWG
Whether Purple or Orange, It’s Not Fair Use
In Brief: The case of the Andy Warhol Foundation and Lynn Goldsmith regarding photos of Prince has been kicking around the courts and this blog for 4 years. The Supreme Court has spoken holding that there was no fair use.
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IP BLAWG
Copyright Makes a Smidge of Room for AI Adjacent Content
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IP BLAWG
Public Domain Class of 2023
In Brief: Each year, a new crop of creative works go into the public domain. This year, works created from 1927 go into the public domain. The class motto is “The Best Things in Life are Free".
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IP BLAWG
Happy Halloween: Writer of “Friday the 13th” Decapitates His Original Agreement
In Brief: An author has a right to terminate a copyright transfer after a certain number of years.
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IP BLAWG
Fair Use Defense Drowns in a Desert Lake
In Brief: A picture is worth a thousand words but using it may not pass the fair use test.
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IP BLAWG
OMG AAMOF TXT Are Not ©*
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IP BLAWG
Oral Agreement = Copyright Infringement Litigation
In Brief: Oral agreements with independent contractors fuel copyright infringement litigation.
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IP BLAWG
All the Way Missing
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IP BLAWG
Copyright Public Domain Class of 2022
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IP BLAWG
Copyrighting a Trademark
In Brief: A trademark has to meet minimum standards of creativity for a copyright registration.
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IP BLAWG
SCOTUS Has Spoken on Fair Use
Oracle America, Inc. owns the copyright to the Java computer language. In 2005, Google LLC acquired Android and wanted to build a new software platform for mobile devices. To allow the programmers familiar with Java to help build the platform, Google copied about 11,500 lines of code from the Java program. These lines of code are part of a programming tool called that’s called an “Application Programming Interface (API)”.
Oracle sued for copyright infringement.
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IP BLAWG
Fair Use Gets Transformed
In a recent blog post, I looked at the meaning of transformative use as it relates to fair use in a suit involving well-known photographer, Lynn Goldsmith, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Lynn had taken some photos of the music artist, Prince. Vanity Fair magazine had licensed one of Lynn’s photos and commissioned Andy Warhol to create paintings from it for an article. Warhol then went a step further and used Lynn’s other photographs as the foundation for series of Prince paintings. Years later, Vanity Fair published an article using Warhol’s paintings. This was when Lynn learned about Warhol’s additional paintings. Lynn threatened to sue for copyright infringement. The Warhol Foundation brought a suit for declaratory judgment that the additional paintings were fair use. The district court held that Warhol’s treatment of Lynn’s photographs was transformative and therefore fair use.
Andy Warhol’s art was innovative. But it may not have been transformative when it comes to fair use.
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IP BLAWG
A Lot of Mine and Some of Yours
Hiller LLC provides plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical services to residential and commercial customers. Hiller was a member of Success Group International that offers management advice and customer service training. Success Group used licensed copyrighted training manuals owned by its predecessor, Clockwork IP LLC.
Hiller decided to create its own training materials and hired an independent contractor who conducted a series of workshops and researched Hiller’s business. The end product was an HVAC technicians Guide. The Guide had original illustrations, its own content and its own arrangement of the information. Small portions of the Guide incorporated information that had been contained the Success Group training manuals. The independent contractor assigned the copyright in the Guide to Hiller.
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IP BLAWG
Sometimes, It’s What You Don’t Say
The US Supreme Court won’t be weighing in on some interesting cases in the world of IP. Here are just a few of them by topic:
Copy- rights in Fictional Characters
- Right to Challenge Patents
- Trademarks
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IP BLAWG
A Useful Chalk Holder
In Brief: Copyright does not protect “useful articles” and design patents don’t always protect against infringement.
Sidewalk chalk has been around a long time. Lanard Toys Ltd. designed chalk holders that looked like No. 2 pencils. Lanard sold the chalk holders to distributors and toy store chains like Toys R Us. Lanard sought and obtained both a registered copyright and a design patent.
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IP BLAWG
Lucky Shot
Alex Cruz was on his way to visit his girlfriend in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. He heard a commotion, took out his iPhone and took a snap shot. He thought he was just taking a photo of the police subduing a crazy person. What he really caught was a picture of law enforcement taking down a suspected terrorist. Alex shared the photo with a friend who then posted the photo on Instagram.
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IP BLAWG
Star Struck is Struck
Kfir Moyal is a pop artist who has created commissioned pieces for celebrities like the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, Gloria Estefan, Flo Rida and Lil’ Kim. His signature style is to take a photograph and add a glittery sheen to it.
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IP BLAWG
States’ Rights: A Loss and a Win
Two recent US Supreme Court cases give a loss for the State of Georgia and a win for the State of North Carolina.
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IP BLAWG
Public Exposure
For your stay at home pleasure, 2020 has granted us with a whole inventory of content that is now in the public domain.
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IP BLAWG
Exceptions to Exceptions
The New Republic magazine published 44 film reviews written by famed film and theater critic, Stanley Kauffmann. The magazine didn’t hire Kauffmann to write the reviews. He wrote them, submitted them and the magazine printed them. The parties never really talked about who owned the articles. They never entered into a “work for hire” agreement.
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IP BLAWG
Big Little Copyright Lies
An application to register tells the Copyright Office about you, your work and why you’re entitled to register a copyright. To further this goal, the Copyright Act requires that you include only accurate information in your copyright application. Gold Value International Textile d/b/a Fiesta Fabrics learned the consequences of not following this rule the hard way.
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IP BLAWG
Scrambling for Copyright Infringement Defenses
Violent Hues Productions published a tourism guide that used a stock photograph depicting the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington D.C. The problem is Violent Hues used it without the permission of the photographer, Russell Brammer.
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IP BLAWG
No Shortcut for Copyright Plaintiffs
In my blog post of August 1, 2017, I posed the copyright litigation dilemma: “To File or Not to File”. On March 4, 2019, the US Supreme Court resolved the dilemma once and for all.
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IP BLAWG
Fun IP Facts for Halloween 2018