In 1923, a silent film titled Safety Last! was released. Although this film is rarely seen or even discussed anymore, it is still considered one of the top 100 films ever created by the American Film Institute. In it was a scene where a young child, played by Harold Lloyd, is seen dangling from the […]
First it was Angry Birds. Then it was Candy Crush. Just recently, Flappy Birds became “THE” game to download and play. Grown adults were taking to twitter to complain about how addicting the game is and how they’d rather play the game than make dinner for their children. Children were failing homework because they’d rather […]
When the Dumb Starbucks store showed up late last week in Los Angeles, there was a lot of media attention on it. One defense that I heard in the media was that it was a parody of a Starbucks store and, therefore, it was probably ok. That’s not exactly the case.
Royalties are a wonderful way for inventors to collect payment for the use of their inventions. Any time a song is played on the radio the song composer receives a royalty for their work. Any time an artist’s drawing is replicated the artist receives a royalty and any time an author’s published work is reprinted, […]
Do movie makers need to obtain permission to use all brand products in their movies? The answer is no, but it is recommended. The rule is a product can be used within a movie without permission as long as the product is being used as was intended by the manufacturers without negatively defaming the product […]
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), passed in 1998 as Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), preserves strong incentives for service providers and copyright owners to cooperate to detect and deal with copyright infringements that take place in the digital networked environment. The DMCA notification procedures place the burden of […]
For songwriters, one of the greatest perks of copyrighting their work is the continuous flow of royalty checks. If Merv Griffin were still alive today he could attest to that. Merv Griffin wrote the recognizable music called “Think” which aired five days a week on the game show Jeopardy during the final jeopardy question. The […]
By: Tyler Hampy As mentioned in my last post, this post will continue the discussion on the fair use doctrine. Specifically, this post will discuss whether parodies of copyrighted works can be considered fair use. To recap, the fair use doctrine permits the legal use of copyrighted material without first acquiring permission from the copyright […]
My last post related how Online Service Providers (OSPs) are subject to disqualification for § 512 safe harbor from copyright infringement liability based on actual or red flag knowledge of user-generated content (UGC) containing infringing material. Another disqualifier for safe harbor is the OSP’s control of and benefit from the infringing act. Control and Benefit […]
