Insights

On June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court decided United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V., finding that Booking.com’s company name is entitled to federal trademark protection, even though the generic term “booking” alone is not. This highly anticipated ruling significantly expands the scope of federal trademark protection for domain names. In an 8-1 […]

Her laptop is strategically placed on a countertop, facing her turntables and elaborate light display, both of which took the entire day to set up. She is a professional DJ, so she is accustomed to enlisting the help of several technicians and preparing in an established venue, rather than her living room via a social […]

Legislation to enact a new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act to replace existing law in Western Australia was under consideration when COVID-19 brought the process to a halt. The legislation would replace the 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act, widely acknowledged as having been watered down to the point where it offers little protection to indigenous sites. After […]

Barb, a vegetarian nutritionist with a blog, decides she wants a photo of sprawling farmland at the header of her most recent post. Searching Google Images, she finds such a photo of an organic peanut farm, albeit with a group of hardworking nut harvesters at the bottom of the photograph. Seemingly innocuously, she saves the […]

On June 3, 2020, the U.S. Copyright Office (“Office”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking and a notice of inquiry to request public comment concerning efforts to modernize the recordation of termination notices. Copyright owners should be aware of these potential changes as they are likely to ameliorate the burdens they face when attempting to […]

The debate over social media’s role in moderating user content, specifically political speech, heated up last month when Twitter started added fact checking and warning labels for the first time to a number of President Trump’s tweets. Traditionally, social media giants like Twitter and Facebook remain neutral, only intervening, and moderating user content when it […]

This post has been updated. Read the original post here, the second addendum here, the third addendum here and the fourth addendum here. As the COVID-19 crisis continues, royalty-free access to digital content remains a concern for academics at all levels of research and instruction. The Internet Archive copyright dispute, however, came to a head […]

Summer camps this year will overwhelmingly be virtual. In this new world, camp administrators cannot simply reuse the legal agreements and releases, privacy policies, codes of conduct and copyright policies they have been using for in-person camps. Each of these elements, together with the camp’s insurance coverage, forms part of an overall risk management program […]

This is the third in a series of articles about the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”). Click here for the first and second. In this post, we highlight the benefits of the MMA for all parties involved in creating a musical work or sound recording. Although the MMA centralizes information and royalties with the Music Licensing […]