Barclays Center, Levi's Stadium, Golden 1 Center, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Hard Rock Stadium — any sports fan or concert-goer can rattle off these names as venues of spectacular games and top-notch musical performances. What is behind those names? Naming rights transactions, which are increasingly popular thanks to their unique intersection of advertising, promotional opportunities, and headline-grabbing financial terms.
"Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia's bikini scene," said federal Circuit Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz in denying an appeal by the movie-filtering service VidAngel to lift an injunction that has kept its technology off the market since December 2016.
Intellectual property battles in technology, including in the entertainment industry, are nothing new, but their nature might be shifting. These days, many of the big IP litigation battles have nothing to do with patents, trademarks or copyrights. Instead, it's all about trade secrets.
What's in a rock band's name? Plenty, if you are talking about Jefferson Starship, which goes back more than 40 years, has had more than 30 members and was born from the 1960s psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane.
In a case brought against former baseball player Lenny Dykstra by a social media ghost writer, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has offered the additional lesson that a writing other than a formal settlement agreement may constitute an enforceable agreement — even if one of the parties expects that additional "standard" provisions will be added to the agreement.
The Library of Congress' Copyright Royalty Board, the panel of three judges who set copyright royalty rates and settle related disputes, announced the launch of an electronic filing and case management system in an effort to streamline its manual and cumbersome case management processes.
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.
