• Posts Tagged ‘termination’

    Accrual of an Authorship Claim

    by  • May 13, 2020 • copyright • 0 Comments

    Copyright ownership claims are not unusual. But what about authorship? Often the distinction doesn’t matter because, in infringement claims, the owner stands in the shoes of author. But it does matter to termination – the author (or the author’s heirs) is the only one with termination rights; a mere owner cannot exercise a termination...

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    Get the Agreement Signed

    by  • April 30, 2018 • trademark • 0 Comments

    This is a remarkable story. It’s a counter-intuitive result, not wrong, but so surprising. I present: THE VILLAGE PEOPLE!! (Go ahead, full screen. You know you want to.) There is no dispute that the plaintiff in this case, Can’t Stop Productions, Inc., created the Village People. The front man in the video, the police...

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    I Hate Copyright Termination

    by  • July 2, 2014 • copyright • 0 Comments

    I mean, I hate to write about it. It’s convoluted, tedious, and the cases don’t generally tell the good juicy stories that I like so much. Luckily for all of us though, there is someone who loves to write about copyright termination, Dave Fagundes. He has a blog devoted to the topic  and it’s...

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    How the Copyright Act Changes Lives

    by  • August 4, 2013 • copyright • 0 Comments

    The Vanity Fair issue has been out for awhile now, but for anyone interested in Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” John Steinbeck, publishing, legal intrigue, contracts, copyright termination, or underhanded dealing, there is a lengthy investigative article in the August issue called “To Steal a Mockingbird.” It is the story behind a lawsuit...

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    Don’t Wait for Termination to Claim Copyright Ownership

    by  • March 26, 2013 • copyright • 1 Comment

    When we last visited Scorpio Music v. Willis, Victor Willis, one of the Village People, was successful in dismissing a suit filed by Scorpio Music, his former music publisher. Scorpio Music claimed Willis couldn’t terminate his copyright grant without his co-authors. In the decision we learned he could and the suit was dismissed, effectively terminating Willis...

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    A Successful Termination of Copyright

    by  • May 13, 2012 • copyright

    The first decision on a termination of a copyright grant under Section 203 of the Copyright Act is out of the gate. It’s a bit of a no-brainer though; in fact, the case was decided on a motion to dismiss. Victor Willis was one of the “Village People,” but more importantly he was one...

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    I Don’t See This Going Very Far

    by  • April 1, 2012 • copyright

    Ray Charles was either an employee and wrote and performed music in the scope of his employment, or exercised his termination right to his songs in 1980 in settlement of a suit against his publisher, or alternatively the settlement was an assignment of the songs. Shortly before his death in 2004, he granted his...

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    Tedious Termination Rights

    by  • August 4, 2010 • copyright

    I’ve carefully avoided blogging about copyright termination rights, but only because the cases are so mind-numbing.  Luckily, though, Tamera Bennett at the Create Protect Blog isn’t afraid to take the subject on.  She’s summarized the 2009 and 2010 Cases of Interest. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United...

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