Copyrights

A federal judge in Atlanta called out attorneys in a nationally watched copyright case for their role in an “an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight between the '800-pound Gorilla' of the recording industry in one corner of the room vs. 'Spinrilla', the self-proclaimed '800-pound Gorilla of free hiphop mixtapes' in the other corner.”

A man claiming to have been cheated out of credit for writing a song that was eventually recorded by R&B star Usher won a more than $40 million judgment in a combined verdict and settlement against two men he co-wrote the song with. And the copyright case against Led Zeppelin by the band Spirit over "Stairway to Heaven" will return for an encore after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit called for a retrial.

The stage is set for the 24-year-old north American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to end and the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has implications for intellectual property, to take its place.

Friday the 13th Screenplay Author's Copyright Termination Notice Found Valid
Infringement Suit over Justin Timberlake's “Damn Girl” Allowed to Proceed

In September, the European Parliament passed a new draft of the European Union (EU) Copyright Directive legislation championed by content creators and publishers, but decried by tech behemoths. The directive will have to go through more committee discussions and another parliamentary vote before it can become law, but this doesn't mean the polarizing legislation isn't already making in-house counsel nervous.

We asked University of Idaho College of Law Professor Annemarie Bridy, one of the forefront experts in both DMCA and automated notice sending, about out of control bots, DMCA takedowns' potential threat to freedom of speech and more.

Recently, the Southern District of New York resolved a question that neither the Southern District nor the Second Circuit had ever squarely faced: Can the lawful owner of an art object create and post a photograph of that object in connection with the sale of the object through an online platform such as eBay, without the permission of the owner of copyright in the object?

 With an assist from Toucan Sam and Tony Bennett, owners of pre-1972 sound recordings no longer have to worry about losing their common law…