• copyright

    Were the Assignments Valid?

    by  • March 18, 2019 • copyright • 2 Comments

    Sometimes a case sends you back to the basics. This was one of those cases for me. Copyright infringement claims against Dollar General appear to be the driving force behind a sequence of assignments of the copyrights for some toys. The relevant chain of title for the copyrights was Acquawood => Focus Brand Limited...

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    Who Is Not a Beneficial Owner of Copyright

    by  • February 25, 2019 • copyright • 0 Comments

    Six years into the case, we’re on to the third decision on ownership in the case of Roberts v. Gordy and have yet to reach the question of infringement. In the first opinion, the district court held that, although there were three registrations for the infringed work, none was effective and so the court...

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    The Cluster That Is Copyright Registration

    by  • October 1, 2018 • copyright • 0 Comments

    Subtitled “Writing it so @RickSanders doesn’t have to“ The copyright registration system, as it relates to an infringement case, is utterly and completely broken. We need reform. Here are the facts we’ll assume are true for purposes of today’s rant. Plaintiff SellPoolSuppliesOnline.com, LLC (SPSO) provided Ugly Pools Arizona, Inc., the defendant and a company...

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    Breach of a Copyright License in State Court

    by  • July 30, 2018 • copyright • 0 Comments

    It’s unusual to see what looks like a copyright case in state court, particularly one that reaches the highest court. It is Associated Management Services, Inc. v. Ruff, a license case in the Supreme Court of Montana. Plaintiff Associated Management Services provides payroll and business services to its parent company Associated Employer, a non-profit...

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    The Scope of the License

    by  • May 1, 2018 • copyright • 0 Comments

    The opinion is sparse on the facts and the law, so we have to do some interpretation. But it’s worth some thought about how the court construed the scope of an implied copyright license. Defendant Kushner wrote software for plaintiff Vickerman Co. Their relationship ended, Vickerman Co. sued Kushner (the court doesn’t say why,...

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    Condition or Covenant? The Answer

    by  • April 12, 2018 • copyright • 3 Comments

    I posed the question whether an overrun in a book printing was a breach of the copyright license granted for the use of photos in the book or just a breach of a covenant of the agreement. The court described the issue this way: According to Scholastic, “Corbis did not treat ongoing, high-volume...

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    Condition or Covenant? A Quiz

    by  • April 9, 2018 • copyright • 1 Comment

    When parties enter into an agreement that includes a copyright license, and there is thereafter a failure to comply with one of the terms in the agreement, a court will have to decide whether it is a failure to meet a condition precedent to the license, in which case the accused use is not...

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    Redbox Wins (for now)

    by  • February 26, 2018 • copyright • 0 Comments

    The decision in Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Redbox Automated Retail, LLC was, to me, unexpected. Who would have thought that Redbox would win a case about selling codes for digital download of Disney movies? The way Disney elected to distribute the codes was key to the outcome, so I don’t know how much ripple...

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    The Second Circuit on Assigning the Right to Sue

    by  • February 19, 2018 • copyright • 1 Comment

    I’ve written in the past (recursive link) about the phenomenon of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by photographers or their agents against textbook publishers. The textbook publishers allegedly exceed the license they had for the use of stock photos, either by exceeding the number of print copies authorized or using the works outside of the...

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