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 […]
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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 […]
Read more...United States v. Arthrex: Supreme Court Crafts a Creative Remedy for the Appointment of Patent Judges
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided a landmark patent case. In United States v. Arthrex, Inc., the Court held that the appointment process of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”)’s administrative patent judges (“APJs”) was unconstitutional. The Court specifically considered whether APJs are “principal officers” who must be appointed by the President and confirmed by […]
Read more...Copyright Infringement of Photographs and Reclaiming Publicity Rights Through NFTs
Richard Prince is a controversial artist known for appropriating third party images. Prince initially drew criticism in the 1980s when he took a photograph of a Marlboro advertisement and simply removed the word “Marlboro” from the picture. One of Prince’s appropriated Marlboro pieces earned him more than a million dollars in 2005 and another earned […]
Read more...AI and Copyright in the Fashion Industry
Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is an innovative system where computers emulate human intelligence processes. AI technologies have been transforming how companies invent and create products, predict consumer trends and streamline production processes. In the past several years, AI has found a new home in the fashion industry and has been used to execute digital clothing designs, […]
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