copyright
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The EULA Working Against You
GC2 Inc. v. Int’l Game Tech, PLC is a fairly unexciting copyright ownership case. The main argument involves construction of an ambiguous contract. (What other kinds are there?) GC2 provided “video graphics and artwork” for IGT’s gaming machines and conversion kits. The agreement had a license grant and it defined certain devices and fields that… Continue reading
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Two Band Members Heave a Sigh of Relief
I have written several times before (caution recursive link) about the copyright infringement lawsuit over the highly-successful “Jersey Boys” musical, based on the band the Four Seasons. Briefly, the widow of an author of an unpublished biography of one of the band members, Tommy DeVito, claimed infringement of the book. It’s very convoluted with just… Continue reading
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Choice of Law and Copyright Ownership
RCTV International Corp. v. Rosenfeld is a exhaustive examination of how US copyright law applies to works of foreign origin. Plaintiff Radio Caracas Television RCTV C.V. is a Venezuelan television company that created the telenovela series “Juana La Virgen”1. RCTV Caracas hired defendant Perla Farias De Eskinazi (“Farias”), also Venezuelan, on four different annual contracts… Continue reading
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Copyright Notice and Ownership
Eminent scholar Jessica Litman has published What Notice Did, 96 B.U.L. Rev. 717 (2016), an interesting article on how copyright notice has shaped copyright ownership jurisprudence. Most interesting to me was the “head’s I win, tails you lose” nature of notice. Since 1870 an assignment had to be in writing, but publishers would name themselves… Continue reading
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You Will Never Get a Copyright Registration Right
I previously wrote about the licensing discussion in Palmer/Kane LLC v. Rosen Book Works LLC, but the decision also points out what is the near impossibility of successfully registering the copyright in a work so that you can actually have a lawsuit claiming it was infringed. Palmer/Kane originally alleged the infringement of 19 works, but… Continue reading
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If It’s Retroactive It’s Not a “License”
This is a big one. As I’ve written about in the past (recursive link), there is a huge upheaval in the stock photography industry over the use of photos in textbooks. In Palmer/Kane LLC v. Rosen Book Works LLC, plaintiff Palmer/Kane licensed the rights in its photos through several agencies, the relevant one here being… Continue reading
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Copyright Registrations Confusing Things Again – Updated
I have not been shy in expressing my opinion about the copyright registration system. I’m not a fan of the requirement that one must have a registration before a lawsuit can be filed; as a result, the first stages of a copyright infringement lawsuit are collateral attacks on the registration. Cisco alleged infringement of the… Continue reading
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What Rights are Conveyed? We Have to Wait and See
I asked in a prior post whether plaintiff Joseph Cooper had the right to publish his videotapes of performances of famous comedian Steve Harvey, taped at Harvey’s Texas club in 1993, based on this invoice: Click here for larger version Unfortunately we don’t know yet, because it’s most certainly a question of fact, not one… Continue reading
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What Rights are Conveyed?
Click here for larger version Can Cooper, the videographer, put his videos of now-famous comedian Steve Harvey on YouTube? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Continue reading
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The Contract Without End – What the Parties Did
I previously described a situation where unhappy licensees refused to acknowledge that there was a new licensor. Bruce Kirby, Inc. was the original licensor of the defendants’ rights to build Kirby Sailboats granted in the “Builder Agreements” and then in 2008 Bruce Kirby sold his business to Global Sailing Limited (GSL). The Builder Agreements didn’t… Continue reading
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