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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit made clear its view — that class-action plaintiffs' lawyers generally should not be awarded fees that exceed the amount their clients get from a settlement — as the court struck down a $1.7 million fee award in which a copyright plaintiffs' class received less than $53,000 in an infringement dispute settlement.
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The lion's share of attention to copyright-infringement claims against Ed Sheeran over his song of the Year "Thinking Out Loud" recently focused on the trial in New York federal court in which a jury found in Sheeran's favor in the lawsuit brought by the heirs of a co-author of the 1970s soul-song classic "Let's Get It On." But in September 2022, a related infringement suit over the same songs' matching chord progression and harmonic rhythm was allowed to go forward.
Features
The lion's share of attention to copyright-infringement claims against Ed Sheeran over his 2016 Grammy-winning Song of the Year "Thinking Out Loud" recently focused on the trial in New York federal court. But in September 2022, a related infringement suit over the same songs' matching chord progression and harmonic rhythm was allowed to proceed.
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A new balance must be struck between the new use and the exclusive right of authors to make derivative works, and part of that balance includes a clearer focus on the statutory fair use factors as well as the commercial nature or not of the new work. As a practical matter, how much the decision changes in this "troublesome" area remains to be seen.
Features
Part Two of a Two-Part Article Part One of this article discussed mechanical licenses and interactive streaming services. Part Two covers songwriters and music publishers, and record labels.
Features
The U.S. Copyright Office recently found itself waffling on a copyright registration it granted, and then revoked, within a span of months. The work in question, a comic book, transcended the traditional artificial-intelligence authorship debate it contained an amalgam of human-created text and generative AI-created artwork.
Features
The United States Copyright Office recently issued a letter ruling on the copyrightability of Kristina Kashtanova's comic book-like work, Zarya of the Dawn. The Kashtanova ruling indicates that the Copyright Office's determination of copyrightability of works involving use of AI will rely on whether the author is able to control and foresee with some measure of predictability the output of the authorial process
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Part Two of a Two-Part Article In the United States and in most foreign countries, the "performance right" is one of the most important rights of copyright and, in many cases, the most lucrative. In the United States, there is no statutory license under the Copyright Act for this right. Songwriters, composers, lyricists (jointly "writers") and music publishers join these organizations, which in turn negotiate licenses with the users of music, collect the license fees from those users and distribute the monies to writers and publishers based on surveys of performances, specific payment schedules and distribution rules, as well as other factors.
Features
The federal appellate court in Atlanta, GA, in a case of first impression "that has divided our sister courts" over the U.S. Copyright Act's §507(b) statute of limitations on recovering damages beyond three years of a copyright lawsuit filing, just added to that division.
Features
Part One of a Two Part Article Analysis of the most important music rate and royalty areas, both past, present and future and how and by whom they are set or determined as well as the effect that legislation, litigation, the Copyright Royalty Board and the Department of Justice have had on the process.
