Category Archives: Copyrights & Trademarks

By: Aashit Shah The debate surrounding utilization of technological protection measures to secure copyrighted works in the digital arena has raised many an eyebrow in the past few years. Technological protection measures are broadly bifurcated into two categories: access control … Continue reading →

By: Frank Chao The Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA”), the music industry’s trade and lobbying group, recently initiated a controversial tactic to bring to surface previously anonymous digital pirates of the Internet. This aggressive tactic aims to make safe … Continue reading →

By: A. J. Bedel As the speed of Internet access improves, the film industry will need to explore its options for eliminating the downloading of digital movie files. After examining the successes and failures of the music industry in its … Continue reading →

By: Joshua G. Graubart The confused state of most state corporate merger statutes allows many intellectual property licenses to find their way into unintended hands by way of corporate merger, in spite of non-assignment clauses. Clearly a detriment to licensors, … Continue reading →

By: Jessica Bohrer Until recently, the question of whether §43 of the Lanham Act prevented the unaccredited copying of an un-copyrighted work was an open one. However, in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, the United States Supreme Court speaks directly … Continue reading →

By: Dov Greenbaum The ambiguity of the present copyright laws governing the protection of databases creates a situation where database owners, unsure of how IP laws safeguard their information, overprotect their data with oppressive licenses and technological mechanisms (condoned by … Continue reading →

By: David L. Lange As most of the public now know, the recording industry has lately filed civil suits alleging copyright infringement against hundreds of individual defendants across the country, many (I think most) of them college students and campus … Continue reading →

By: Shalisha Francis In regards to copyright the U.S. Constitution states: “Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right … Continue reading →

By: Graham J. Chynoweth This iBrief discusses how persistent international concern and emerging domestic concern over Chinese intellectual property theft have helped give sharper teeth to the Chinese copyright regime in the past two years and how these new laws … Continue reading →

By: Gregory C. Walsh [I]f a manufacturer or distributor intentionally induces another to infringe a trademark, or if it continues to supply its product to one whom it knows or has reason to know is engaging in trademark infringement, the … Continue reading →

By: Yelena Simonyuk The advent of the Internet means incredible opportunity for global interaction. Consumers in Asia can buy from a small business in Louisiana, and businesses can advertise to a much wider market for a fraction of the cost … Continue reading →

By: Joseph Goodman Caspar Bowden (cb@fipr.org) is the author of a recent DLTR article, Closed Circuit Television for Inside Your Head: Blanket Traffic Data Retention and the EmergencyAnti-Terrorism Legislation. He is the Director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research … Continue reading →

By: Kelly Donohue In the online world, where intellectual property rights can be violated with the simple click of a mouse, innovation sometimes finds itself engaged in a game of chicken with the law. Recently, online-photo-search engine Ditto.com played just … Continue reading →

By: Harry Mihet At first blush, the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution appear to serve conflicting interests and to exist in irrevocable tension. On one hand, the Copyright Clause grants authors “the exclusive Right … Continue reading →

By: Kelly Donohue Efforts by leading record labels to fill the void they created by shutting down Napster led several to develop their own subscription online music service. The author of the following iBrief assesses the viability of those services … Continue reading →

By: Ashley A. Johnson To what extent does Sony’s time-shifting fair use argument extend to recent innovations that make it easier for hackers use DVR technology to generate copies of protected material? The author assesses the potential liability of DVR … Continue reading →

By: Darin Glasser Computer-generated works raise grave authorship concerns under U.S. copyright law, with arguments in favor of allocating copyrights to the computer user, programmer, the computer itself, or some combination therein. The author discusses the issues and paradoxes inherent … Continue reading →

By: Bob Hyde This iBrief follows various phonorecord formats to illustrate the specifics of the First Sale doctrine as it applies to digital phonorecords. The author argues that the disposal of a digital phonorecord by means of distribution infringes an … Continue reading →

By: Jennifer Askanazi, Glen Caplan, Dianne Descoteaux, Kelly Donohue, Darin Glasser & Emelio Mena In the recent British Horseracing Board case, the English High Court signaled a return to the “sweat of the brow” standard of copyright protection. Although recent … Continue reading →

By: Jennifer Askanazi, Glen Caplan, Dianne Descoteaux, Kelly Donohue & Darin Glasser First Diamond Multimedia, then MP3.com, now Napster. The recording industry, in a flurry to protect its copyrighted material, has waged an all-out battle against the dot-coms for the … Continue reading →

By: Justin Graham, Ashley Johnson, Emilio Mena & Neil Wolitzer The explosion in Internet technology in the past decade has drawn the Lanham Act into the realm of electronic commerce. Trademark owners seeking to register domain names have recently found … Continue reading →