Last December, guitar hero Joe Satriani filed a lawsuit against the members of Coldplay and Capitol Records, alleging the band’s song, “Viva La Vida,” contained “substantial, original portions” of his 2004 track “If I Could Fly.”1 (Listen here to refresh your memory.) To the delight of many Coldplay fans, a financial settlement was finally reached [...]
A transient Manhattanite usually has a certain amount of pretension that must be indulged. We’ve moved to the City because we identify, or at least aspire to identify, with a population at the vanguard of savviness and style, or at least conspicuous consumption. Unfortunately, for some of us, our Manhattan pilgrimage involved quitting our jobs [...]
A suit over socialite Paris Hilton’s trademarked phrase “That’s Hot” reached its way up to the 9th Circuit. Hallmark depicted the heiress as a waitress, warning a customer as she served him his food, “Don’t touch that”. . . “That’s hot.” She asserts claims of invasion of privacy and misappropriation, among others, for the [...]
by Kate DiGeronimo
The 2008 Presidential Election utilized the breadth of the Internet in ways previously unseen. As a new public commons, the Internet was the medium through which many Americans gathered information in making decisions about who to vote for on Election Day. Politicians realized that the Internet was to have a significant [...]
By: Laura Nastase1
President Barack Obama’s April 2009 trip to Europe has been exhaustively chronicled from political, fashion, and protocol perspectives. But commentators have skipped almost entirely over the fact that President Obama may have breached both copyright law and the iTunes licensing agreements by giving Queen Elizabeth II an iPod. True, these are [...]
– Not a verbatim transcription —
[7:53]
Andrew Bridges: We hear a lot about the damages to content creators through flouting of IP rights, but these damages are not usually actually proven. To the extent that they have been proven, those damages should influence the debate, but it is often less than claimed.
Lionel Bently: Are we talking [...]
By Ursula Clarke
In February 2008, the EU Commission proposed a directive to extend the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. The stated objective of this proposal was to “stop European performers from being the poor cousins of the music business.” (It should be noted that this branch of copyright concerns solely [...]
By Amanda B. Agati
There is something palpably wrong about the current state of copyright protection for fashion design, or lack thereof. To illustrate, Steve Madden, a brand notorious for copycatting, sunk to a new low in the Fall of 2007, when its graphic designers stole not only the design, but the actual photograph of Christian [...]
By Karla Hughes
Irish ISP Eircom recently settled the case brought against it in the Irish High Court by several major record labels, by agreeing to adopt a “3 strikes and you’re out” policy with regard to illegal downloading. The action against Eircom was brought under § 40 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, which [...]