You have a website; it is your pride and joy and you cannot wait until others see it. What happens next is not what you anticipated, however. You get it out the public and start advertising it like crazy so that your business takes off in an upward fashion, yet all of a sudden you […]
Widerman Malek Law Blog
What you can learn through copyright infringement cases
Throughout the time sine copyright laws have been in effect, there have been many cases claiming a violation of a copyright. The first thing to understand about copyrights is that they are laws protecting the artistic creation of someone. This would include books, paintings, photographs and songs, to name a few. Sometimes the violation […]
Language and IP rights
I bet when you are having a conversation with someone, during the conversation someone will use a popular phrase that has been associated with a product. Or it might be a line from a movie. Maybe a line from a book. You know someone came up with these phrases, can you be accused of IP […]
Music and copyright infringements
I love listening to music. I often come across a song that strikes a chord with me and just gets stuck in my head. You become so familiar with the melody you can pick the song out from just hearing a few notes. It’s just this phenomenon that has gotten some songwriters in a bit […]
Steps to Ensuring You’re Legally Using Online Photos
Everyone loves to capture moments in time through photographs, and furthermore we all love to share them with our friends and family. Before the wave of social media, we would get our film developed and then make duplicate photos (which of course we paid for) and then send them to our families. No harm; no […]
Is Someone Using Your Copyrighted Work?
Determine if your work that has been copied is protected by copyright law. Copyright law protects the expression of almost every creative expression imaginable, as long as it’s fixed and original. It doesn’t protect ideas, facts and any utilitarian language. Imagine that you spoke to someone about writing a book about an investigator who needs […]
Buckling down on Copyright Infringement
Stealing someone’s works of art and calling them your own is illegal. Even written works can be stolen and sometimes plagiarized into another piece of work and then sold. These situations are frowned upon in companies and the court room. A Florida couple is being sued for using 12 photographs originally taken by Getty. These […]
An Intellectual Property April Fools Prank
It’s hard to image how any intellectual property news or trademark law can be part of an April Fool’s joke, but the anarcho-capitalists of Keene, NH were able to pull it off, if even for just an hour or two. Free Keene is a loosely organized group of self-titled anarchists, libertarians and “voluntaryists” who openly […]
Why Dumb Starbucks Made A Dumb Trademark Move
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.
GoldieBlox Sues Beastie Boys First Over Use of “Girls” Song
The Beastie Boys are receiving a bad reputation after suing toy company GoldieBlox for copyright and trademark infringement of their song “Girls”, but apparently they were not the first to strike. GoldieBlox sued the Beastie Boys first! The trouble all began last month when the toy company GoldieBlox launched a highly successful YouTube video using […]
