Even if you do not play video games, you probably know that the video game industry makes a lot of money. It is quite likely that you also have a sense that the content in video games falls under copyright protection. What you might not realize, however, is that...
Copyrights
Adding a New Aesthetic or Expression Is Not Necessarily Transformative
In 1981, photographer Lynn Goldsmith did a photoshoot with Prince while on assignment for Newsweek. While those images were never published, Vanity Fair licensed one of them in 1984 for an illustration by Andy Warhol. Mr. Warhol ultimately used the photo to create 16...
Winning a Copyright Infringement Case Can Sometimes Have a High Cost
I recently ran across a story that illustrates the importance of choosing your legal battles carefully where copyright is concerned. In Golden v. Michael Grecco Productions, Inc., photographer Michael Grecco’s attorneys contacted blogger Lee Golden about using their...
Understanding the Role of Women in Copyright
In celebration of Women’s History Month, I thought it might be interesting to look at the impact that women have had on copyright in the U.S. Like many institutions in America, the copyright office started with mostly male gatekeepers who tended to favor male...
What You Need to Know about the Marrakesh Treaty
Although popular book titles are commonly produced in formats accessible to the visually impaired (for example, in audiobook or braille format), lesser-known titles are frequently only available in written format. Unfortunately, this means that an enormous number of...
Exceeding Software User-Limit a Much More Dangerous Proposition Than You Might Realize
Written by Guest Author, Marks Gray Associate Logan McEwen On February 25, 2021, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Bitmanagement Software GMBH v. U.S. At issue was software developed for the U.S. Navy which required payment on a per-user...
Offer Presentations for Your Business? Protect Your Original Materials
Are you providing workshops, seminars, and training sessions as part of your business? Do you use your own original manuals, books, videos and presentation materials? If you are using your own original materials, you should protect them from potential infringers –...
What Songwriters Can Do to Take Advantage of the New Blanket License for Mechanical Royalties
As songwriters know only too well, a significant portion of music these days is shared online, either by people downloading it directly or streaming it through various services. Unfortunately, up until this year, how royalties through these services work has been...