Musical artists have always had to deal with questions of copyright. In recent years, however, many have felt a shiver up their spine from copyright issues that deal with the basic building blocks of music. That encompasses fundamentals like chord progressions,...
As we have discussed, a central theme of U.S. Copyright law is the stimulation of creative ideas, their free exchange, and commercial profitability from them. This is why copyright enforcement is not black-and-white/all-or-nothing – not all infringement is considered...
In many copyright infringement cases, there is a bit of gray area. Perhaps the accused did not realize they were infringing on another’s intellectual property. Or they believed that their usage was allowed due to parody or educational purposes. This is not what...
What is the value of your company’s trademarks? What about the patents or copyrights you hold? Is the value of those intangible assets reflected anywhere on the company balance sheets? Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are often used as collateral for loans that...
Currently, Disney faces multiple termination of copyright notices filed on behalf of five comic writers and artists of the original Marvel Comics. The artists (or their heirs) claim that they played pivotal development roles in creating characters like Spider-Man and...
What do LeBron James, Kings of Leon, and a hybrid Pop Tart/cat monster have in common? They all comprise pieces of a trending type of art that lives on the internet: NFTs, or “nonfungible tokens.” These digital art pieces cannot be replicated, because they employ...
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...
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...