On November 8, 2021, the United States Supreme Court will hear a case to determine the scope of 17 U.S.C. §411, which prevents the filing of a lawsuit for copyright infringement without a valid copyright. The Court will also consider the meaning of the Copyright Act’s publication standard, deciding whether separate sales constitute separate publications. […]
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New Proposed Rule for CASE Act
This post is an update. Read the original post here. In August we wrote about the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (the “CASE Act”) and the initial steps taken by the Copyright Office to develop procedures for the new Copyright Claims Board (“CCB”), as well as open questions surrounding its constitutionality and feasibility. The Copyright […]
Read more...Marvel Lawsuits: Is It Time for a Review of Copyright Termination Rights and the Work for Hire Test?
On Friday, September 24, 2021, the comic book publisher Marvel initiated five lawsuits in federal courts, attempting to invalidate copyright termination notices sent by a former writer and the estates of several former artists. The copyrights in question included some of the most recognizable Marvel characters from the “Avengers” series, such as Iron Man, Black […]
Read more...Preserving Cultural Heritage: Some Bright Spots Amidst the Losses
Our prior insights about cultural heritage have dealt with irreparable losses and the limitations of using traditional intellectual property law to preserve intangible cultural assets. We have also focused on the controversies that arise when IP law and traditional values collide. For example, the 50th anniversary in July 2021 of the creation of the Australian […]
Read more...Big Business is Watching: Employee Tracking in the Workplace
Rapid advances in technology have enabled employers to track employees with greater granularity and detail than ever before. At Amazon, roughly one in ten firings is due to a “low productivity score” as determined by a computer program. This algorithm tracks an employee’s “time off task,” or the amount of time a worker spends away […]
Read more...Andy Warhol Decision Spells Stronger Rights for Photographers Fighting Infringers: Addendum
This post is an update. Read the original post here. In April we wrote about the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 992 F.3d 99 (2d Cir. 2021). That decision concerned a series of silkscreen prints and pencil illustrations of singer […]
Read more...The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (CASE Act)
As we reported earlier, as part of the coronavirus relief and government spending bill passed by Congress in the final days of 2020, a quasi-judicial small claims court was established within the Copyright Office to hear disputes over infringement cases valued up to $30,000. Although the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (the “CASE […]
Read more...USPTO Files for Trademark Protection of Its Own Name
To combat misleading solicitations and trademark filing scams, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) recently applied for federal registration of the USPTO trademark and logo design. Third party scams have become a growing problem over the years for the USPTO, as well as for our clients and consumers. It not uncommon for trademark […]
Read more...Artists Use Their Media to Voice Concerns About Privacy Intrusions
Artists are joining the conversation about privacy intrusions from drones and other surveillance mechanisms. A fiberglass sculpture of a U.S. military drone is now hovering 25 feet above New York’s iconic High Line. The sculpture is a commissioned work for the High Line Plinth. Modeled after London’s Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, the project is intended to […]
Read more...AI and Posthumous Digital Personas
Kazuo Ishiguro’s newest book, Klara and the Sun, is a work of fiction, but barely so. Klara is an AF, or artificial friend. Spoiler alert — her purpose is to study her owner so intensely that she can not only learn her habits and perform her activities but take on personality characteristics to the point […]
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