work made for hire
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The Bankruptcy Court Still Has to Approve It
Here’s a bankruptcy practice tip—you can’t just go signing documents when your company is in bankruptcy. Defendant Deep claimed to own the copyright in the “Aimster” software of yore. He accused plaintiff XAC, LLC, a subsidiary of Xerox, of copyright infringement. Deep had three different theories for why he owned the copyright in the software,… Continue reading
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When a Logo Has Two Owners
The last two posts were about a case, DeliverMed Holdings, LLC v. Schaltenbrand, involving ownership of a logo. In the first post, it turned out that the copyright in the logo was still owned by the designer, not the company using the logo. @WatermarkIAM tweeted a caution: “You must make sure #copyright ownership is clear… Continue reading
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A Tale of Two Views of a Business Venture
Sometimes you just can’t do better than the court in setting up a story: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of… Continue reading
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It’s Not Really a “Work Made for Hire”
One of the most misunderstood aspects of copyright law is work-made-for-hire. The lay understanding is that a work created at the request of another in exchange for payment is a “work for hire.” That’s not true, as explained by the Supreme Court in 1989 in Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, but nevertheless it must… Continue reading
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The Cold War and the Copyright Act
There’s a fascinating bit of cold war history in the Copyright Act – who knew? The story is told in Hendricks & Lewis, PLLC v. George Clinton. George Clinton, of Parliament and Funkadelic fame, owes the law firm Hendricks & Lewis a lot of money. The firm obtained two judgments against Clinton and sought appointment… Continue reading
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A Derivative Work Made for Hire
Photo by davesandford, CC BY-NC 2.0 In U.S. Auto Parts Network, Inc. v. Parts Geek, LLC out of the Ninth Circuit, the court says that its decision is about a “previously unexplored intersection of the Copyright Act’s work for hire and derivative work provisions.” Perhaps so, although the analysis is fairly routine. Defendant Lucas Thomason… Continue reading
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The Scope of One’s Employment
Work made for hire cases come up pretty often, but when they do the question usually is whether the person was an employee. This is the question that the factors in Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid are used to answer. But for a work to be a work made for hire, the work must… Continue reading
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There Aren’t Regular Work Hours Anymore
I haven’t seen a lot of material to blog about, so I’ve resorted to writing about a fairly ho-hum case, albeit a court of appeals decision, albeit an unpublished one. Unless you have a compulsion to read all work-made-for-hire decisions, or at least those involving software development, you can probably just move on. I think… Continue reading
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The Yankees Still Own Their Logo
Last April there was an interesting complaint filed (blogged here) by a woman who claimed that her uncle, Kenneth Timur, now deceased, had designed the New York Yankees logo in 1936 but hadn’t been compensated for it. The plaintiff’s proof of authorship was the fact that her uncle, when he revised the logo in 1952,… Continue reading
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11th Circuit Affirms Email Exchange as Contract
You may recall a dispute between an individual named Rafael Vergara Hermosilla and Coca-Cola about the ownership of Spanish lyrics Vergara wrote that Coca-Cola used in its World Cup advertising. First, Vergara filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and Coca-Cola was ordered to provide credit to Vergara. The 11th Circuit affirmed. However, on summary… Continue reading
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