New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill on August 24 that will regulate daily fantasy sports betting, a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry in the state that has, until recently, gone largely unregulated nationwide.
Boots Litigation Involving John Wayne's Persona To Be Heard in California, Instead of Texas
Distinguishing Between Burden of Proof for California Statutory and Common Law "Likeness" Violation Claims
Interpreting Jury Verdict in Quincy Jones' Music Royalty Case
Defendants in entertainment industry cases often invoke California's "anti-SLAPP" statute, Calif. Civ. Code §425.16, which is meant to bar lawsuits filed to muffle free speech activities or a legal right to petition. This summer, some noteworthy court decisions have come out of California that involved anti-SLAPP motions filed by attorneys who are defendants themselves in entertainment litigations.
In Matal v. Tam, the trademark case involving the name of the Asian-American rock band The Slants, the SCOTUS held that the portion of §2(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §1052(a), that prohibits the federal registration of potentially disparaging trademarks and service marks, violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
During this year's annual Tony awards recognizing Broadway theater, Whoopi Goldberg took to the stage to announce that the musical revival of Falsettos would be hitting movie theaters nationwide in July. Falsettos, which played at Lincoln Center Theater in New York, was nominated for five Tonys, but a deal had been negotiated long before the June 11 awards broadcast to make the stage production into a piece of event cinema.
CSX Railroad says it will appeal a Savannah, GA, jury verdict of $11.2 million rendered after a six-day trial stemming from the fatal train accident on the set of the film Midnight Rider of which CSX Railroad is required to pay $3.9 million according to the jury's apportionment.
Consumers' Digital Music Price-Fixing Suit Ruled No "Class" Act
Marshall Tucker Band's Former Manager Loses Bid for Attorney Fees After Prevailing in Trademark Action Brought Against It By the Band
Since 2007, the development of the musical has been the source of protracted litigation that reached its latest stage in June 2017.
A New York trial court judge struck a defendant's answer in a media-based breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition suit, after finding that 2,000 emails, including attorney-client privileged information possessed by the plaintiffs, had been hacked and stolen.
