Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article posted on the IPKat  concerning the Los Angeles jury's decision on March 10, 2015 determining that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke had copied several elements from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up” with the “Blurred Lines" hit of 2013. Happy reading!  " What with Kats scattering in all directions   to cover so many exciting developments, it's always good to know that the IPKat, Merpel and the blogging team have friends on whom they can rely.  One such friend is occasional guest blogger   Dorothea Thompson , once upon a time a trade mark attorney but now recycled at London-based law firm Bray & Krais. Dorothea has penned this little piece on a recent piece of US litigation that has become a global smash-hit: Blurred Lines in focus Just in case IPKat readers have lived a media-free life in the past 48 hours: on Tuesday an eight-member jury unanimously found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams ’...

(Article published in the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law, International Associates Action Group Newsletter , p.15).   I nnovation continues to outpace the law. Since the last six years, the convergence of cloud-based products/services with the consumption and distribution of entertainment content is producing a large number of conflicts and legal uncertainty in the television industry. Indeed, the scope and bounds of copyright law remain ill-equipped to tackle this rapid pace of technological advancement. The question remains: are we not in presence of a “loophole” in the law?    Following the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the TV content owners ( American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Aereo, Inc ., 573 U.S. ___ (2014)) concluding that “Aereo performs petitioners’ copyrighted works publicly” infringing this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watc...

Following the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, and the massive spread of animated GIFs, Vines, and “GIF-goal” on the Internet, mostly over Twitter and Vine (the short-form video sharing service acquired by Twitter in October 2012) but also on Facebook, the most-watched football league in the world is trying to protect their intellectual property rights. According to Dan Johnson, director of communications at the Premier League, GIF are a breach of copyright law. But is it, really?  Graphics Interchange Format, mostly commonly known as the acronym “GIF”, has not only been the subject of disagreement over its pronunciation, even called the “The Most Absurd Religious War in Geek History” (for the record, it should be pronounced so it starts with a "j" rather than with a hard "g"; although President Obama preferred to use the "hard g" ), but due to its widespread usage on the Internet recently caught the attention of the UK's Premier League communicatio...

Fresh and interesting article posted on TorrentFreak about a recent court decision making copyright trolling less easier and less lucrative than it is today.  Happy reading! "Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox have successfully appealed a district court decision ordering them to reveal the identities of 1,058 subscribers accused of pirating movies via BitTorrent. The verdict is a significant blow for the extortion-like mass-lawsuits many copyright trolls have filed in recent years. Two years ago district court Judge Beryl Howell, a former RIAA lobbyist, granted adult movie company AF Holdings the right to obtain the personal details of more than 1,000 Internet users suspected of downloading their works using BitTorrent. The verdict was a big win for the porn studio and its controversial law firm Prenda, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. The ruling would allow copyright holders to s...

Belgium is not only famous for food (such as french fries, chocolates, waffles), beers and the statue of a little boy peeing in a fountain. We also have a Belgian boy reporter: Tintin! (and Snowy, of course).  In general, a copyright law prevents the unauthorized copying of a work of authorship. It is about protecting authors by rewarding them for their creative efforts. A copyright law grants certain exclusive rights (such as the right of reproduction and distribution) to the owner of a copyright in a work, for instance, a book. As it is the case with every right, the question is: how long should it last? The duration of copyright protection is the life of the author plus 70 years. As you will read in this article, Hergé died on March, 3 1983. Therefore, the copyright protection will lapse on March 3, 2053 (1983 + 70).  This fresh and interesting article is about a possible future copyright protection saga concerning Tintin character (from the IPKat ): ...