Introduction This blog post examines an ongoing legal dispute over access to publicly available internet data between HiQ Labs and LinkedIn Corp. First, it recounts the facts and procedural posture of the case. Second, it describes the case law and history of the misappropriation doctrine, a legal doctrine that could prove decisive in the dispute. […]
Introduction Since 2015, Merck Mercuriadis has been telling investors that music assets were significantly undervalued and that music publishing was ripe for a remodel. The music publishing industry was born over a century ago and profits by acquiring rights in songs and collecting royalties. After nearly 200 pitch meetings, Mercuriadis founded Hipgnosis Songs Fund with […]
Judge John G. Koeltl of the District Court of the Southern District of New York (“S.D.N.Y”) handed a victory to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (the “Foundation”) when it granted the Foundation’s motion for summary judgment in a copyright infringement lawsuit. See Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, […]
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., the Supreme Court voted by five-to-four to expand the government edicts doctrine for the first time since 1888. 140 S. Ct. 1498 (2020). The State of Georgia had claimed copyright in the annotations contained in its only official collection of law, the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA). Id. at […]
Do tattoos on NBA players’ bodies in a videogame infringe on a copyright owned by an exclusive licensee of the tattoos? Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York says no. Plaintiff, Solid Oak Sketches (“Solid Oak”), is the exclusive licensee of five tattoos copyrighted by tattoo artists. Solid Oak Sketches, LLC […]
In 1718, the infamous pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, lost his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, after running it aground in what is now Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a marine salvage company, discovered the remains of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. North Carolina, the wreck’s legal owners, contracted with Intersal […]
The Second Circuit’s February 2020 holding in Castillo v. G&M Realty L.P., 950 F.3d 155 (2d Cir. 2020) provides not only an excellent means for understanding the operation of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, 17 U.S.C. § 106A (2012) (“VARA”), but also offers an intriguing fact pattern replete with deceptive and vindictive behavior […]
Professor Hugh C. Hansen authored a blog post on the recent Supreme Court opinion Matal v. Tam for SCOTUSblog.com. The Court’s judgment on the trademark “Slants” case was announced on June 19th, 2017. Professor Hansen argues that the case is one of the most important First Amendment free speech cases to come along in many years […]
Last June, in Converse v. ITC, the International Trade Commission (ITC) found that Wal-Mart, Skechers, and New Balance, among others, could copy an athletic shoe design – Converse’s Chuck Taylor – because it lacked “secondary meaning” to consumers, and therefore failed to qualify for trade dress protection under the Lanham Act. In trademark law, secondary […]
In June, Prof. Hansen filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, which had taken an appeal from the Federal Circuit’s decision in In re: Simon Shiao Tam (April 20, 2015). The case presented the issue of whether the TTAB erred in refusing to register the trademark of Mr. Tam’s band, THE SLANTS, on grounds […]
Recently, courts have invalidated patents for claiming “abstract” ideas or business methods under Section 101 of the patent laws as applied in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014). The Court reasoned that taking a method that is “abstract” — practiced in the prior art “manually,” without a computer – and just performing […]
From time to time, a firm will retire its logo and replace it with a newer version. This prompted us to wonder: why would a company, whose logo is instantly recognizable, want to make this change? To answer the question, we might have conducted a little informal research, ferreted out the company’s graphic aspirations, […]
