A declaratory judgment action for copyright abandonment can give rise to fee shifting under the Copyright Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a case of first impression.
June 01, 2020Scott Graham
Machine learning allows certain AI to create entirely new content based upon the materials it used to learn. In the process of creating new content, AI may create copies of copyrighted works in memory storage as a byproduct of its overall output sequence. This article explores authorship and ownership of such AI-generated content, and to what extent, if any, can copyrights be infringed upon when AI reproduces copyrighted works for machine learning.
June 01, 2020Shaleen J. Patel and Sushmitha RajeevanArticle III Inter Partes Review Decision Precluded By Congress, SCOTUS Rules SDNY: Video Game Makers Not Violating Copyright with NBA Player Tattoos
June 01, 2020Howard Shire and Shaleen PatelThe U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that individual states are free to commit copyright infringement. The Court held that Congress attempted to abrogate states' sovereign immunity in an unconstitutional manner when enacting the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA).
May 01, 2020Shaleen J. PatelAn overview of copyright troll litigation and explores potential litigation strategies for responding to troll cases.
May 01, 2020Nancy J. MertzelCopyright Termination Claims Found Timely, But Loan-Out Companies Can't Terminate Copyright Assignments Judge Unhappy With Damon Dash's Trial Behavior New York Federal Court Sees No Copyright Infringement or False Endorsement in Use of Mural in Film
May 01, 2020Stan SoocherPart Two of a Two Part Article This article discusses, among other things, the Swedish music industry perspective on the European Union's Copyright Directive, the growth of multi-country music licensing hubs and the impact of Brexit.
April 01, 2020Stan SoocherDefendants 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.
April 01, 2020Scott GrahamFor 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
April 01, 2020Robert W. Clarida and Robert J. Bernstein
