Copyright law and popular music can sometimes appear to be strange bedfellows. The Founders were not likely to have intended this tension, given the fact that “promot[ing] the . . . useful Arts,” is followed by a phrase that limits the exclusive right to use, only “securing [it] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors.” [...]
Continue Reading →Case closed, or so it appears, as the Supreme Court refused to grant cert to the Seventh Circuit’s holding that classic characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in the public domain.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1886. Fans loved the character so much, the author couldn’t even [...]
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An epic legal battle between the famous comic creator Jack Kirby and Marvel Comic was settled just days before the Supreme Court was scheduled to discuss the case. The parties were involved in an extensive legal dispute regarding the ownership rights to legendary comic characters such as X-men, Iron Man, and Spider-Man. The [...]
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A Hollywood lawyer representing Jennifer Lawrence, Kristen Dunst, and Kate Upton accused Google of taking “little or no action” to remove the recent hacked nude photos and even facilitating their dispersal, in a letter sent Wednesday threatening a $100 million lawsuit.
Entertainment lawyer Martin Singer–known in the industry as Continue Reading →
A single syllable could hold major implications for the future of music sampling.
The disputed syllable, “oh,” is the subject of a recent lawsuit filed against rapper Jay-Z, Atlantic Records, and Roc-a-fella. The suit alleges that Jay-Z took the micro-sample from bluesman Eddie Bo’s “Hook & Sling Part I” for use [...]
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This past Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided Aereo’s fate in a much-anticipated opinion regarding the legality of capturing over-the-air television broadcasts and delivering them via the Internet.
Aereo, a New York based start-up company, provides consumers the ability to watch television programs as they are being broadcasted on Internet connected devices. Since [...]
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One day in 1985, Smokey Robinson said to his then wife Claudette Rogers “I wanna leave you, don’t wanna stay here . . . . Don’t wanna spend another day here . . . . I wanna split now.”
Now, there’s some sad things known to man, but ain’t too much sadder than [...]
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This past month, the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held yet another hearing to discuss copyright reform. Aptly titled “The Scope of Copyright Protection,” it offered testimony from some of the most renowned scholars in the field. Yet, although the House and Senate conduct hearings and discuss intellectual property policy [...]
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Have you ever been in the market for a textbook? If so, you, like most students enrolled in college these days, were probably shocked by some of the exorbitant prices that university bookstores charge for a book. For example, if you were in the market for a brand new Constitutional Law textbook you would be [...]
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Starting a process that might completely shake-up copyright law in the next few years, Mr. Victor Willis, the former lead singer of the Village People, is filing to regain control and ownership of several of the group’s earliest songs, including the renowned song ‘Y.M.C.A.’
Thirty-five years ago, when Congress re-wrote the copyright [...]
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