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San Francisco tattooist Sweet Cicely Daniher likes unicorns. She’s authored a book about unicorn imagery. She’s painted a unicorn mural on her ‘72 Chevy van that’s been featured in San Francisco Magazine. “At the risk of belaboring the point,” her attorneys wrote in a complaint that has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, “the plaintiff has had a real thing for unicorns, for a very long time, and they have been a central theme and subject matter of her artistic work, throughout the entirety of her career.”
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By Robert W. Clarida and Robert J. Bernstein
For the past five years, the copyright bar and the music industry have carefully followed the many twists and turns of the potentially monumental infringement case that asserted that the opening of the iconic Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven” was copied from the introduction of a little-known 1967 instrumental “Taurus,” written by the late Randy California. In March 2020, a unanimous en banc panel of the entire Ninth Circuit affirmed portions of a prior three-judge appellate ruling that “Stairway” did not infringe the Spirit song — and in the process resolved some thorny issues involving substantial similarity and copyright scope that will be important for future litigants
Kozinski Angle In 9th Circuit’s Led Zeppelin Ruling
By Scott Graham
Defendants Led Zeppelin and its music labels were the winners in the copyright decision by the Ninth Circuit over the song “Stairway to Heaven.” But the estate of songwriter Randy Wolfe (p/k/a California) wasn’t the only one who got the short end. Among the collateral damage from the ruling was a 2002 precedent written by former Chief Judge Alex Kozinski that endorsed the so-called “inverse-ratio” rule.
By Ryan W. Morris
The Copyright Alternative in Small Claims Enforcement Act is a proposed congressional amendment to the current copyright statute that would create an alternative dispute resolution program for copyright small claims and other legal proceedings.
A Primer on Rights in Video Game Avatars
By Andrea Perez
Recent lawsuits have grappled with the fair use of one’s likeness in video games, attempting to apply established order to a changing field.
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