There are a slew of lawsuits against textbook publishers alleging use of stock photography beyond the scope of the original license (recursive link). Whether one characterizes it as massive intentional infringement, or a simple failure of the publishers to track their use and true-up on their licenses, it looks like it is a pervasive...
Read more →Oh no, I don’t think so. The Camellia Grill was a New Orleans restaurant that closed in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Various aspects of the business were owned by various entities owned by Michael Shwartz; for our purposes we’ll just refer to them all as “Shwartz.” In August, 2007, Shwartz entered into several agreements...
Read more →Oh, adidas. adidas AG is a large multinational conglomerate headquartered in Germany. It reported that at the close of 2014 it had 154 subsidiaries, one of which is co-plaintiff adidas America, Inc. A few years ago adidas developed “miCoach,” an “interactive personal coaching and training system.” Parent adidas AG owns the company’s US patents...
Read more →Below is a portion of the “Submit” page when one posts a review on Rip-Off Report, owned by defendant Xcentric. (Click on the image for the full page.) If you were to use the scrollbar on the right, you would find this grant: “By posting information or content to any public area of www.RipoffReport.com,...
Read more →As I’ve written about before, Sybersound is a 2008 Ninth Circuit decision that was not well-received by copyright authorities. We now have a second Ninth Circuit opinion interpreting Sybersound that undoes the original harm. The decision is Corbello v. DeVito, the case that just keeps on giving for someone who writes about copyright ownership....
Read more →I’ve been writing for some time (recursive link) about numerous lawsuits between photographers, or their agencies, and textbook publishers that have used photographs in excess of what they originally licensed for their books. Mostly I’ve been writing about challenges to standing, which are early in the cases on a motion to dismiss. But some...
Read more →I previously wrote about an unusual case in Florida, where a state agency alleged infringement of registered trademarks. The lawsuit was dismissed for lack of standing, with the district court reaching the conclusion that the enabling statute for the agency didn’t grant it the right to enforce its trademarks. According to the statute, Florida VirtualSchool...
Read more →Screen Media Ventures filed a copyright infringement suit against BitTorrent downloaders of the movie “Infected” and sought leave to subpoena internet service providers for subscriber information. Screen Media claimed this language gave it enough ownership interest to have standing for the claim: by itself, or in the name of Infected...
Read more →Since the Acacia Research Group‘s business model is based on acquiring patents, you would expect them to be fairly diligent about ensuring that the chain of title is solid. But it wasn’t in Endotach LLC v. Cook Medical Inc. Endotach claimed to be an exclusive licensee of two patents, having acquired its rights from...
Read more →I’ve already written a couple of times about Federal Treasury Enterprise Sojuzplodoimport v. SPI Spirits Ltd. The plaintiff in the case, FTE, manages the STOLICHNAYA trademark on behalf of the Russian government. The first time the case went to the Court of Appeals, the appeals court reversed the trial court and held that the...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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