
In an August 18, 2023 decision, a judge ruled that works generated by artificial intelligence (AI)[1] are not copyrightable. This may have significant ramifications for protecting works created, in whole or in part, by AIs. READ MORE
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In an August 18, 2023 decision, a judge ruled that works generated by artificial intelligence (AI)[1] are not copyrightable. This may have significant ramifications for protecting works created, in whole or in part, by AIs. READ MORE
Instagram isn’t liable for copyright infringement because it provides embedding tools that allow third-party websites to retrieve and display copyrighted photos, according to a recent appellate decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals based its decision in Hunley v. Instagram on the fact that the third-parties’ servers never make copies of the photos during the embedding process. This is known as the “server test” for intermediary infringer liability. READ MORE
In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court found that an Andy Warhol silkscreen of the singer Prince, sourced from an original Lynn Goldsmith photograph, did not qualify for the Copyright Act’s “fair use” defense because both the photograph and the silkscreen had the same use, which was to illustrate commercial magazine articles about the singer. READ MORE
A Fox TV affiliate in Florida, reporting on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, interviewed Kelly Meggs, one of the convicted insurrectionists from jail, and used a portion of a video in which he had been shown marching with other insurrectionists in stack formation up the Capitol steps. The photographer who took the video from which that photo was taken sued the station for copyright infringement. But in Brody v. Fox Broadcasting, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the action on fair use grounds. READ MORE
The recent decision in Petersen v. Diesel Power Gear highlights the risks to executives and owners of any business that engages in advertising. The plaintiff in Petersen is an artist who creates large and dramatic murals on building walls, including commissioned murals for his clients. One of his murals is called “Godlike.” The defendant, Diesel Power Gear, is in the business of promoting diesel trucks and related apparel through various social media outlets. Petersen also sued three individuals who were part owners of Diesel Power Gear. READ MORE
Patent and trademark applicants need to be pretty careful in their registration applications, but the Supreme Court has made things a bit easier for copyright applicants. The Court ruled in Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P. that legal inaccuracies in a copyright application do not invalidate the copyright if the applicant didn’t recognize them at the time of filing. READ MORE
Here are seven resolutions – not including the obligatory “get in shape” or “be more organized” – that you may want to consider for 2022. READ MORE
A California judge has dismissed the copyright infringement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims of a photographer who sued Pinterest after he found his photos on the popular social media website READ MORE
Social media platforms make it easy to embed photos or videos that appear on their sites. For example, Instagram and Facebook’s embedding tools connect a website visitor’s browser to the platform’s computers, retrieves the identified work, and shows it – all without copying the original work. But is embedding legal? According to Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, no: It’s likely a presumptive copyright infringement. READ MORE
Did social media site Pinterest indirectly infringe a photographer’s copyrighted images simply by maintaining a site where its users could possibly do just that? No, said a California federal judge, who dismissed the photographer’s suit. Even contributory infringement requires knowledge of specific acts of infringement. READ MORE
A recent copyright case serves as an important reminder to be careful what you wish for, because you may get it. READ MORE
The Consolidated Appropriations Act that Congress passed in the days before the holiday is largely touted as a government spending bill. Digging deeper into the bill reveals its potential impact on American intellectual property issues – specifically in the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 and the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020. READ MORE
A news organization can fairly use a copyrighted photo from an Instagram post when the social media post is itself a key element of the news, according to a ruling in a case involving tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. READ MORE
A multi-million dollar verdict in favor of New York graffiti artists is now final after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the real estate developer Gerald Wolkoff’s appeal. READ MORE
Richard Bell, an attorney-photographer who has filed and settled many infringement lawsuits, has learned that a loss at trial can be particularly expensive when a court ordered him to pay a defendant’s fees. READ MORE
Omitting a small print photo credit can get you in big trouble under the copyright laws. That’s what happened recently when a court affirmed an award of almost $74,000 against BuzzFeed, when a reporter copied a photo from the New York Post and removed the photographer’s name. READ MORE
A recent decision shows why intellectual property owners need to verify the merit of their DMCA takedown notices before making them. Improper DMCA takedown notices can lead to costly litigation and potential liabilities. READ MORE
Copyright claims based on social media content will often depend on the technologies used and the applicable terms of service—both under the control of the social media companies. READ MORE
If you have been itching to use someone’s social media content – despite all the warnings you’ve heard from copyright lawyers – there’s finally a way to do it. At least as to Instagram, if you use one of Instagram’s tools to embed a public Instagram post within your own posting, you will not infringe the original user’s copyright. READ MORE
Is it a technical foul to show NBA players’ tattoos in a video game? A federal judge in New York answered with an emphatic “No,” and ruled in favor of Take Two, a video game developer, and against a company that purchased the tattoo copyrights from the original artists. READ MORE
You don’t need to be a professional photographer to take a valuable photograph. A recent case demonstrates that all you need is to be in the right place, and snap a photo at the right time and the right angle. And, of course, register it promptly. READ MORE
Because they allow recoveries of up to $150,000 per infringed work, statutory damages are a powerful copyright remedy. In a recent copyright infringement case, a defendant tried – and failed – to argue the copyright owner should not be entitled to statutory damages because of its “litigious business strategy.” READ MORE
The CASE Act, a law designed to help copyright holders expedite the resolution of small copyright infringement claims, would provide an alternative path to resolve copyright infringement claims. But whether the CASE Act will pass the Senate in its current form and fulfill its stated premise remains open to questions. READ MORE
It doesn’t take any formalities to authorize someone to use your copyrighted work. A recent dispute between a writer and the Buffalo News newspaper illustrate how granting someone permission is often taken very informally. READ MORE
A federal jury in Indianapolis found that retired attorney Richard Bell does not own the copyright to a photograph of the Indianapolis skyline — an image at the heart of dozens of infringement lawsuits Bell has filed over the years. READ MORE
In a recent decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals avoiding answering if good faith is a viable defense to a copyright infringement claim. Instead, the court found the defendant failed to prove its alleged good faith, reversing a lower court’s dismissal of a photographer’s claim. READ MORE
All is fair in love and war. Political campaigns seem to get a break too, based on a copyright infringement case involving the Republican National Committee’s copying of a photograph used in a political advertisement. READ MORE
The Visual Artists Rights Act protects works “of recognized stature,” but a Pittsburgh artist is pushing the limits of what that means after claiming his works are recognizable simply because he says they are. READ MORE
In two unanimous rulings, the Supreme Court limited when a copyright claimant can file suit and how much a successful claimant can recover in litigation expenses. The decisions interpreted the Copyright Act’s requirements concerning “registration” before suit, and “full costs” recoverable by a successful plaintiff. READ MORE
Take it from a recent case involving a free-to-use photograph of Willie Nelson: even Creative Commons-licensed photos can land you in court if you don’t follow the attribution requirements. READ MORE
You can copyright just about any design, right? Not quite. According to the Copyright Office, designs still need some creativity, illustrated by a dentist’s attempts to copyright photos of teeth. READ MORE
For those who missed the message five years ago that social media photos aren’t free to use, a new decision has renewed and reinforced that message. The circumstances of the case may make this decision hard to forget or ignore. READ MORE
A new report from the Copyright Office has shed light on the deficiencies in their own processes: outdated and complicated resources are making it harder for visual artists to copyright their work, leaving them vulnerable to online infringement. READ MORE
While determining copyright fair use may seem as easy as adding up the scores of the four fair use factors, the reality is not so simple. Fair use requires complex and nuanced judgments, not simplistic arithmetic. READ MORE
On the topic "Copyright and Photography: What you should know," Mark discussed notable photography copyright cases and their impact on copyright law. READ MORE
Two cases involving photographs of city skylines illustrate what is, and isn’t, copyright infringement. READ MORE
Do copyright owners need an issued copyright registration or only a pending application to enforce their copyright in federal court? The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide this question. READ MORE
A fleeting glimpse of graffiti in the background of an HBO series does not constitute copyright infringement, a federal judge has ruled. READ MORE
Copyright - intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship, but does this included an artistic concept or idea? Can copyright infringement included artistic concepts? READ MORE
A federal judge in New York recently held that online publishers who embed tweets that include copyrighted photographs violate the rights holder’s public display right, even if they do not copy or store the photo on their servers. That decision has received a lot of publicity. But other courts view the issue differently. READ MORE
Group registrations of photos will have new limitations beginning February 20, 2018. Photographers were previously able to register an unlimited number of photographs in a single registration application, for the regular $55 fee. The new rule limits registrations to 750 photographs, requires use of new electronic application forms, and streamlines registration by work-for-hire applicants. READ MORE
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) sets up safe harbors so that service providers generally aren’t liable for their customers’ infringements, but the safe harbor provisions require providers to cut off repeat infringers. The responsibility falls on the Internet service providers to not only enact a repeat infringer policy but they must also enforce their policy. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals so held in a lawsuit brought by BMG Rights Management (US), LLC against Cox Communications, Inc. READ MORE
The Internet-famous feline known as Grumpy Cat won a substantial jury verdict in a copyright case that demonstrates the importance of securing a clear agreement from license owners before adding their likeness to additional products. READ MORE
Ownership is unique under the Copyright Act — that’s the argument a federal court made in throwing out an infringement action filed by a copyright owner who created the work in question but failed to retain a financial interest in it. READ MORE
You may think there is one simple hard-and-fast rule of copyright law: You cannot transfer a copyright without a written instrument signed by the copyright owner. It’s right there in section 204 of the Copyright Act. But the “instrument” need not be a formal document that specifically addresses copyrights. READ MORE
As some photographers aggressively and regularly assert claims, defendants have concluded that in response they need to aggressively probe the bona fides of those claims. READ MORE
If copyrights are intangible, how can they also be “thin” or “broad,” “weak” or “strong” – words that are frequently used to describe the breadth of a copyright’s application in infringement cases? READ MORE
To secure evidence for an anticipated lawsuit against TV host Dr. Phil McGraw, a producer for the show, Leah Rothman, recorded nine seconds of the show’s unaired archive footage onto her cellphone. The employee probably felt she had a strong case for making the recording. But a decision entered against her shows that fair use is never simple and straightforward, and can be argued from many different angles. READ MORE
The Judge found it “virtually” impossible consumers would see the play rather than reading the original book or see the 2000 film based on the book. He found it more likely the play will increase interest in Grinch. READ MORE
In its motion to dismiss, CBS argued that the two-second on-screen display of Steven Hirsch’s photograph was a fair use, or, at most, a de minimus infringement. The district court denied the motion. READ MORE
In an update to our post on a case filed last year, a federal court in New York recently denied appropriation artist Richard’s Prince’s motion to dismiss Donald Graham’s copyright infringement lawsuit. READ MORE
The Southern District of New York is now considering a case that centers on a play that presents a wicked spin on a classic childhood storybook. The case may test the boundaries of what is parody, what is transformative, and how much taking is “fair.” READ MORE
Beware sultry-looking ladies. That’s one of the lessons from the recent court decision sending a copyright case against the United States Postal Service to trial, but there are more. The decision can serve as a teaching tool and warning regarding use of photos and other images. READ MORE
The court found that Zillow did not engage in any volitional (i.e. causative) conduct. Zillow’s website created the copies automatically in response to a Zillow user’s request to upload the photos to Zillow Digs. According to the court, “something more must be shown than mere ownership of a machine used by others to make illegal copies.” READ MORE
One person can own physical photographs, but not have the right to use them, because someone else owns the copyrights. That distinction is the heart of a case being fought in federal court in Chicago. READ MORE
Results in two recent cases suggest that circumstances have significant effects on damages and attorneys’ fee awards. READ MORE
Solid Oak sued Take-Two Interactive Software for copyright infringement last year, claiming it is a technical foul to display the copyrighted tattoo on LeBron James’s arm in Take-Two’s popular NBA 2K line of video games READ MORE
Richard Prince used Eric McNatt’s 2014 photograph of Alex Gordon by cropping McNatt’s photograph, surrounding it with his Instagram frame, and adding three lines of text and emojis. READ MORE
You may think of it as “graffiti,” but a court in New York must determine if “aerosol art” is “meritorious” and of “recognized stature” such that it gets special copyright protection. READ MORE
As Creative Commons licenses are more widely used, questions are developing about how to use them, and how they apply in particular situations. READ MORE
A Texas-based photographer has sued a sports media website for allegedly selling copies of his copyrighted photo of an infamous scuffle at second base between pro baseball players Rougned Odor and Jose Bautista. READ MORE
What happens when you use legitimate means to achieve despicable ends? In the case of two attorneys at the center of a high-profile copyright enforcement scheme involving pornographic movies, you end up on the receiving end of a federal indictment. READ MORE
Under copyright law, “statutory damages” are generally limited to a single award per infringed work, regardless of how many copies were made. Under a recent 9th Circuit decision, however, multiple damage awards per infringed work are permissible in some cases. READ MORE
Even Halloween candy and political messages can implicate copyright law, as Donald Trump Jr.’s Skittles tweet illustrates. The actions taken by the photographer illustrate the two most common steps available to photographers whose works are infringed on the Internet. READ MORE
A famously learned federal judge sprinkled his high-profile dismissal of a copyright claim against Beyoncé with pop culture references to Taylor Swift, "Ghostbusters," and Oscar Wilde, along with some hard lessons for plaintiffs who overreach with their copyright claims. READ MORE
The analysis in an art copyright case can sound like a class discussion in Art Appreciation 101. Take the case of Croak v. Saatchi & Saatchi, which could also be called Pegasus I v. Pegasus II. READ MORE
An artist’s copyright infringement suit alleging that a Starbucks Frappuccino advertising campaign infringed her copyrights has been dismissed, on the ground that the campaign didn’t appropriate the “total concept and feel” of the artist’s works. READ MORE
Earlier this year, just hours before beginning jury selection, Fox News settled a copyright dispute regarding its use of Thomas Franklin’s iconic photograph, “Raising the Flag at Ground Zero,” thus leaving its fair use argument unresolved. READ MORE
The artist Richard Prince, who is sometimes known as the #PrinceofAppropriation, claims that copyright law protects the artistic style he calls “appropriation art.” Photographer Donald Graham filed suit against Prince, alleging Prince infringed the copyright in Graham’s photograph. READ MORE
We’ve handled multiple cases of photographers who signed releases or licenses, but nonetheless later claimed that use of his or her photograph, by the licensee, constituted copyright infringement. READ MORE
In an interesting twist, the publisher named the law firm that gave them a fair use opinion letter as a third-party defendant. Essentially, the publisher claims that if it is liable to the Times because the thumbnails weren’t fair use, then its law firm is liable for giving it bad fair use advice. READ MORE
Given the breadth of copyright protection, which was established more than a century ago in a Supreme Court case involving low-art circus posters, courts do not evaluate the merits of art or other creative content, so long as it meets a fairly low threshold of creativity. READ MORE
How much of a photo must be taken in order to meet the copyright standard of “substantial similarity”? According to a district court in New York, you need more than a man standing in front of a crowd, wearing a white tank top, with his arms stretched out to the side. READ MORE
An infringement claim can be easy to assert – the plaintiff just shows ownership of a valid copyright, and the copying of his or her work. But in some cases the defense can be even easier. READ MORE
Koons is no stranger to allegations that his art infringes others’ copyrights. He often uses pre-existing images to comment on contemporary culture, and that kind of work carries inherent infringement risks. READ MORE
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