• Posts Tagged ‘joint authorship’

    Law and the Speed of Business

    by  • June 22, 2010 • copyright

    Vergara Hermosilla v. The Coca-Cola Company demonstrates that probably the most significant role of a contract is to make sure that everyone is on the same page.  But business happens fast, so the writings aren’t always in place as fast as they should be.  Here, Coca-Cola was whacked with a preliminary injunction all because...

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    Just Get Over It

    by  • August 16, 2009 • copyright

    Janky v. Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau is not a precedent-changing decision.  But you know you’re in for an entertaining read when a case starts: This over-litigated case, involving a song by a doo-wop group, comes to us with 18 district court orders and memorandum opinions spread over a combined 239 pages.  The district...

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    The Reason for a Declaratory Judgment Counterclaim

    by  • February 25, 2009 • copyright

    Exclusive Rights blogged on a recent decision from the 11th Circuit. It involves the “Rooker-Feldman” doctrine on the availability of review of state court decisions by a federal court. I promptly mentally filed the decision in the category of “I’ll look it up if I ever need it,” but the brief summary of facts...

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    Wild Things

    by  • February 17, 2009 • copyright

    The IPKat gives us an interesting story of a failed joint authorship theory for a children’s book. The German court held that the illustrations were not a joint work of authorship with the literary work and characters because there was a lack of sufficient interaction between the illustrations and the plot of the story....

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    It All Looks So Different In the Snow

    by  • December 27, 2008 • copyright

    It’s a fairly sure bet that when the government is sued for infringement of intellectual property, the government will win. In Gaylord v. U.S., the Postal Service was accused of infringing the copyright in the statues of soldiers that are part of the Korean War Veterans Memorial, by using them on a stamp. The...

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    Warner/Chappell Still Happy on Birthdays

    by  • July 12, 2008 • copyright

    I’m a little late to the game, but I just got around to reading Robert Brauneis’ “Copyright and the World’s Most Popular Song,” available here, blogged here, here, and here. It’s an interesting and thorough investigation into whether “Happy Birthday” is still protected by copyright. The telling of the story covers initial ownership of...

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