If you use a piece of another artist’s work in your own artwork, can you confidently proceed, knowing that the “fair use” defense under copyright law will save you from a lawsuit? In the current state of American IP law: No. Fair use came about as a way to respect a...
After a thoughtful two-year preamble, the Copyright Claims Board (CCB), precipitating from the 2020 CASE Act, is beginning to take solid form. The final rules for its copyright infringement proceedings were released in late March, to take effect April 25, 2022. Part...
Can copyright lawsuits ever be used for purposes other than protecting your own intellectual property? A recent case in Southern California shows a novel copyright infringement suit.David Berkovitz, a professor at Chapman University, taught his Business 215 class...
What do you imagine when you hear “Winter Olympics”? Steep hills of snow, racers on skis, lyrical ice skaters… And copyright infringement? Musicians and brothers Robert and Aron Marderosian – known as the musical artist “Heavy Young Heathens” – are waging a copyright...
An oversight by ITV and Netflix may have led to a copyright infringement case against toymaker LEGO – one of many reasons to get clearance for any artwork used in a show. How are these companies connected in this story? In Netflix’s Queer Eye series, artist James...
Mega-pop-star Taylor Swift finds herself going to trial for copyright infringement over two phrases from her major hit “Shake It Off”: “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate.” The case has climbed the judicial ladder for several years, starting with the lawsuit...
In January of 2021, I wrote about the passage of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (CASE Act). This act created a separate system through which small copyright infringement claims could be processed more efficiently. The Original...
Supermodel Genevieve Morton has engaged in another tussle with Twitter over unauthorized posting of her images. This comes on the tails of a suit from 2020. This time, the culprit is Magic Pony Technology, a third-party photo algorithm company acquired by Twitter. One...